Unanswerable questions inspired by Michael Torres’ poem, Writing Prompt

What if I were stuck in space, at the point of no return, would the urge to write even be an issue? Who would I write for, and why, especially if the forest inside already caught fire long ago, and all that was left were the charred stumps of the past? Being above the clouds like this, watching those lightning strikes from space is like witnessing a coronation of the petty gods. Then what? My hands, like the lost wings of birds, orchestrate the music of the spheres. The river of regret is filled with starlight singing of celestial events. But I am not an astronaut stuck in space. That thin ribbon of life, all that intense blue leaking into darkness, that is home, the big blue jewel. But in the distance, the impenetrable blackness inside a song, has lost all the notes. Remembrance is an Oort Cloud in the first mind of regret. The great white what if? What comes into focus, stars waiting in the limelight. And what about the gravity and weight of stars circling the brink of a black hole, what about the hunger, what do they regret, do they feel the edge of Occam’s Razor slicing through the sorrow, paying out their light like that in the undertow of experience? Do they perceive themselves as selves as they circle the drain of oblivion, or is that being too specific? Am I being too anthropomorphic? We have entered the Anthropocene Age. What is selfhood when we have changed the course of earth’s destiny? Do we replay those eons of storied light feathering the pages of an old book where the letters escape to their own darkness? And what about the transience of constellations, depending upon one’s point of view? What does Orion look like from the other side of the Andromeda Galaxy anyway? Can you still see his large shoulders carrying the weighted stories of humanity? The sheath of his sword, that singing blade, will it slice through the darkness? They say consciousness is like a river rippling over stones. But the creekbed is tired and wants to sleep.

7/12/23 Write On! with Susie Terence 

I am still not ready to unpack this one. Perhaps never.