Bloom
Updated: Mar 12
I am a wanderer.
I am familiar with how the Milky Way sets
on the horizon, the way the universe dies,
the language of the stars.
Seen the world-top
from pink clouds and sipped
from stardust.
Flirted with comets.
I know that time is temporary. Yet
the reminder burns as I
place my fingers to the torrid dust,
breathe the decay.
The ground recoils at my touch.
Echoes
of my footfalls reverberate through the planet
as if hollow.
This is what they used
to call Earth.
I can tell it is lonely.
Others like me have no desire to pay visit
to this once blue-green pellet that sits in oblivion.
A corner of its forgotten heliocentric system.
Neglected.
Its crevices—
barren land and looming monsters that
brokenly splutter black smoke.
Never ending dunes of debris
soft between my toes.
This is a place God has abandoned.
Thirst
is foreign to me. Yet
I am filled with it
at the sight of these armageddon red skies and
unabated sandstorms.
Walking in solitude
I explore slowly the sense of
despair.
Upon the one hundred and eighty fifth dune I
encounter
the silence dies.
I feel it instantly.
Whirr.
Minuscule. Deafening.
Whirr.
Sun catches silver, watch as a little creature
emerges from the yellow.
It is metallic, a box on four wheels.
Curious.
Creature holds a flower.
I greet it.
Creature tilts its crane
as if it were a child.
“Robot.” It beeps hesitantly. “Robot.”
Sand shifts under its wheels.
Robot contemplates, then plants the rose
into the ashes.
“It will die,” I tell it.
“No,” Robot replies.
And after, I follow its trail.
Whirr.
As we cross the
corpses, husks
Of cities.
Over hills
Weathered rib cages
of Earth.
Robot keeps on planting.
Whirr.
Four letters engraved
into its shell—
I learn that its name is H O P E.
H O P E is the legacy of mankind.
Of an era
now dead and buried.
Charged with the adornment of an empty shell,