we are hurtling in not-quite-circles around a nuclear explosion at 107,226  kilometers per hour,

around a flaming ball of death turned warmth & life force coursing through our veins.

but the light fades quickly once past us, however.

fireflies speckled against india ink,

we explode.

collective consciousness,

a chord seven billion voices strong.

snippets escape, steam from a boiling pot.

reflected radio waves compress through the dark.

where are the vestigial relics of Cold War speeches now?  

what about lingering traces of trending songs?

pinpricks of sound penetrate spacetime,

screaming through the void

on the heels of New Horizons.

but space is so vast that these words don’t really follow the probe—

carving their own paths, invisible, smaller by a thousandfold,

braving solar wind & comets, meteors & asteroids

& escaping the heliosheath,

the River Styx to interstellar space.

uncharted territory and emptiness.

but yet the teeming Milky Way.

we see our words zooming—

free at last.

but unbeknownst to us they spiral,

through stellar cluster & harrowing dark.

closer now, ever closer,

they can’t stop now, the pull increases,

resistance futile—

denser, darker, farther.

black hole pulsing, lurking within.

our galaxy is a safe haven, yet ruthless all the same,

Sagittarius A lets not even light or sound escape.

“an Iron Curtain has fallen acro...”

“thank u, nex...”

nothing.

meanwhile elsewhere: faster, wider, larger—

a breakneck pace in a cutthroat race

against who?

against no one.

sticky honey from shreds of shattered comb:

stretched apart, giving life, full of light.

our fragments escape.

universal acceleration, who knows when it will stop?

but we are here, here to see the structured mess

byzantine, yet still achingly

incomprehensibly

lovely.

it’s all we’ll ever get.