A query for you When you say, “the end of the universe,” Do you mean an all-encompassing apocalypse Or a place where a sea of stars hits a wall Of cement and impenetrability? Which end do you see fit for me? Where did you hope I’d end up? Luckily, for you, I’ve found both I outran an apocalypse Of shrapnel and crashing crafts Then another Of microcosms and mutated air And another Of hunger so primal it drove people beyond reason Beyond fraternity Beyond humanity Creation evaporated at my tailcoat Wherever I landed my tiny red retro rundown ship Suns turned terminal Cores crumbled Skies sank And fuming, furious me Meeting those like you And seeing eyes like those set in your head Those tears I averted I was your cold traveler Moving too quickly, thinking too large To notice those little things The splinters and ricochets That my climbing catalyzed Leaving me in absence Balmy room-temp voids by my side Crowning me the last one standing Always awing astral ashes Always pushing and poisonously progressing Always striving to say a singular sentence I made it Until all din and discord swelled Blossoming into antithesis A red wave that enveloped stone and star Coming this way And all ways Always Now there are no more worlds to use as rungs No galaxies there to transcend No lives left to trivialize There are only the red wave and the wall it is destined to crash into The wall on which I now rest my livid laurels A wall endlessly high and low and wide A slightly protruding edge, acting as a dock Where stands a white-hot lantern The only light in the void-like surface It illuminates a titanic sign translated in all five million languages From Aramaic to Zyzyxian “No more left. Turn around to see creation.” And I turn, leaning against my ship’s hull To see the red Only two, three miles away I reminisce of destruction My destruction The actions needed to rise here So I can say I made it Not acts of catacombs and catastrophes But little slices and screams That composed of everyday micro-apocalypses I expel them like fine sand And I see those stressors of you and you and you And even the one here at the keyboard I breathe and pulse and become all of it Snide comments And spiking rents Schedule conflicts Familial rifts The silences between the compliments The judging without relent Slit gazes when leaving their house Passing over names we can’t pronounce Rotted, hollow promises Cyanide-like kisses He doesn’t know She doesn’t know They don’t need to know Don’t accept no Never let your weakness show Just keep your head low That’ll let me really glow Like the sunset Like the son’s set Of musical renditions You miss time and time again You’ll be better next time, though You’ll make it to his next show He doesn’t need to know That it all came down to this That it all turned to red And I can feel the heat of the wave I wonder what it will be like Collision A meeting After all this time of running, surviving To be pinned down is to reach a destination The humming, cold lifelessness of the wall And I sigh because as the sparks of the end singe my pocked face I can say at least one thing I made it I made it here And I made all that And I’m the last one to hear me say it