We were busy worshipping
words. Shipping worlds
through string. We held eardrums
to heartbeats to confirm
we were still alive. Someone unchained
the sun from its orbit. We watched it drift
like a curious child beyond the Oort cloud. Dimming
until it was another star in the night's freckles
and even the day lost its name. We looked
at our hands with unfamiliarity. Trying to understand
the opaqueness of texture. Our moulting bones
discarded. Our new elbows reptilian.
The latest language stripped of meter,
rhyme, beauty. We were warned: there are no straight lines in nature.
Women sang new myths. Men planted
numbers in the soil to see if the fruits
could solve our problems. We invented
new gods and crooned when we remembered
how to brush each other's hair. Music played
in a distant never. Insects danced
in a different hemisphere of our brain
or of the earth. We often tried to look up,
but we could only see our feet,
alien and hairless.
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