HONEY DRIPS

Milky nebulae glitter past in their swooping hues, the spirals first this way, then that as the thickly booted feet tip and sway, and yes even angle themselves slightly toward the sun.

The stars shine down their light in spots and waves, the eyes’ retinae scanning and attaching themselves to targets and responding deftly to stimuli.

The body the eyes are attached to is living and breathing for the moment, chest expelling carbon and drawing in depleted oxygen in gasps and starts.

The body has a brain within, and nerves sent twisting and snaking through subterranean channels calibrated for a clime without turning and twisting nebulae, with starshine far removed from thought and view.

The body belongs to a person who is here. They have been here for some time and will continue beyond time. This is why.

Distant galaxies come in as impressionistic swirls and whirls, little tableaux dipped from the tip of a cosmic brush out there in The Grand Nothing.

And the seconds drip like honey from a spoon, until each one can be tasted individually and studied; picked apart and analyzed for an indeterminate amount of time.

The stimuli still rush on as the last breath comes in, hardly oxygenated and stale and tasting bitter on the tongue.

A billion miles back there’s a home; a rock with trees set on it and the starshine far removed. There’s oxygenation and little cosmic swirls set only in the minds of those down below.

The thickly booted feet fall and make purchase with nothing; no down makes claim and up won’t have them either. It’s nothing but ink to spill across the page of it all, a couple scribbles of a nib to set it all in motion.

And the stories from before the booted figure’s life come back in staggered steps, racial memory a download that’s set to expire as soon as life does. The stories of beings sent from beyond the sky, from the place that the figure now floats through in amniotic hues of blue and black.

The honey solidifies in solid chunks and refuses to fall from the spoon; the Gape up ahead is pitch.

A yawning chasm set in the fabric of it all, a whirling drain pulling in thought and time. An irresistible force set from before anything was, an ethereal dream spinning wide and far and carrying in all it finds.

It occurs to the booted figure that it will die, that a cessation of being is just beyond the lip of the hole, waiting to catch the honey drips on a great and unseen tongue.

Milky nebulae glitter past in their swooping hues, the spirals first this way, then that as the thickly booted feet tip and sway, and yes even angle themselves slightly toward the sun.