Tag: failure

i have imagined my gravity failing

it’s not what you think

if what you’re thinking
is your feet disconnecting
from the earth
as your lead-heavy bones
float helium-inflated heavenwards

you will be walking
fallen behind the dog
during the walk
the rhythm of the toenails
on concrete
is someone tick-tock flicking
sun bleached vertebrae
resting just below your skull

you feel it
then
right there
a sudden dissolution
as you come apart
not like in the movies
where some magic spell turns you
you into dust
that dissipates on a breeze
blowing from the space-time you once occupied

it’s much deeper
more personal
because you stay you
as you come apart
skin cells, hair follicles,
hemoglobin, nerve tissue,
pasty blobs of greasy fat
in your gut and in your brain.
–and smaller still–
organelles, membranes
mitochondria, tightly wound strands
of dna unbraiding itself
proteins and elements and atoms
and bosons and gluons and quarks
each quanta impossibly separating
coming apart

there’s no explosion
in this failure of gravity
no small pile of ashes or dust
no spark
no chilling sound effect

you’re just there
completely in pieces

too small
to see
to put back together
you expand whitmanlike
and assume all space and time

and there is no heat death
because there was never heat