comically, like a cartoon, like taffy
feet just lines of paint streaking to the singularity--
boy, what would that feel like?
hopefully nothing:
if time does the same thing
maybe my nerves would never fire.
i'd see myself scraping toward a dark threshold
for 80 years, and die of old age, never again
feeling my feet. and even
those 80 years: were they?
outside my perspective, maybe it was
a millennia, or a nanosecond; they talk about this in movies.
as for me & my mind, i think about this pretty often:
not really black holes, but
other people: how you might be
stretched out like geometry, eyes wide with fright
and it might be year 67 out of 80 for you
even though it all just seems "didn't that happen just
last week?" to me.
or the reverse; i'm fixated on a moment,
some conversation you've by now forgotten,
that one time way back seven years ago
still feeling to me--and me only--like earlier today.
anyway, i'll demure. speak softly, wait for you
to reveal your own event horizons
because i never know if my yesterdays
were your last years, or seconds ago.
january 2022
