A ZERO POINT: WITHOUT YOU

A ZERO POINT: WITHOUT YOU 

There will be a world with no you in it, / and it won’t be lopsided here without you.... Forever, you will never come back. ---Hannah Stephenson, “Fraction”, The Storialist, 01-17-12 

He said it first: after this death,

there is no other. It is peremptory. 

But a world without a memory,

is as final as it can get without you. 

Will it be a place where love is free?

Magical, except you can’t come back. 

The pictures will be on the walls,

as mute as the hooks they hang on.  

They will not talk to you, they can’t.

Even if they could, they would not. 

Even if you have become the cobweb

wrapped tight on the broken frames, 

you would not have been there. No.

You are not part of the furniture. 

Like dust in abandoned houses, you

will inhabit the nooks and crannies, 

and would not be disturbed until

termites take over. Too late then, 

because you are not even a remnant

of temps perdu, you are lost in time 

and in space; even among the stars

and black holes, you are not there. 

Like the sound of a single hand

clapping, you will not be heard. 

The first death is always the last. 

---Albert B. Casuga

01-17-12