Cemetery Wash

When the world falls asleep,
The last time,
I’ll count planets in a line -
The last specks
Of a universal egg
We may see for a long, long
While.
And while everything
Everyone’s
Ever
Known is closing their eyes,
Settling down for the rest,
I’ll remember the simple, soothing turn
Of an imperfect cradle
Rumbling on its axis
To bring Everything forward
in time.

When the world falls asleep,
One last time,
It may dream for a while,
And I hope it remembers an age
It was young.
When Everything
Was passion,
Primal instinct,
One animal stuck in its tracks
While another dressed up “emotion” with “opinions”
And “feeling” with “thought”.
And I hope it remembers
The love and hate
Soaking into the pores of its
Sun-stained crust,
at the time.

When the world falls asleep,
Time won’t last,
As the lights crumble out one by one.
And the reel taps the end with a light-hearted
“Click.”
To mark the running out of future to print on -
To mark the running out of space to place the print on -
The past is quite full to the brim.
And each sun’s hand has closed,
And each gas turned to rock,
As the atoms of the world
Settle down for a nap.
And the middle of a swirl, somewhere, someday,
Says “Stop.”

And the world won’t remember me
For very long,
When it blinks,
One last time,
For a time.
But I’ll count life,
And let a
starlight
bathtub
plaid shirt
methane
apathy
memory
child’s hand
Cemetery wash over me,
Until it contains Humanity,
And that’s when the world falls asleep,

The last time.