There's a tipsy folk band in the last sticky light
I'm out in the field gazing up at the plenum
waiting
[ KB1JLA do you copy ]
when I was younger it was something to be used to
the ritual of always saying goodbye
you always had somewhere to be
even then there was always a next time
[radio static]
all of your life spent leaving
I was hiding between the tables
in that room full of flickering screens
linked to radio telescopes
triangulating decoding
refracting the bits of collapsed signals
across the canvas of the afterlife
far past where the last beacon ends
past the words for blackmail
indiscipline renouncement
[KB1JLA are you there? Over.]
(The only answer is my voice radiating into sea-black night)
the memory replays
"that's the thing about kids, you never know what you're going to get"
bird bones cracking inside the radio
You're still there in dreams
Where it was all some mistake
In the dream the air was so serene
I was already old
I saw the last of the giant stars rising
[Dad, can you hear me?]
"you never know when your number's going to be up"
haunted by the specters of language
locked in by what I have forgotten
I feel the fallout of the imploding star
& all my ghosts sit beside me
It's ok to come home
[ KB1JLA please respond ]
About the Creator
Timothy James Lane
Sea Ghost
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