Litany; Dust
A.E. Ash
For we will in that distilled, dead-stop moment
name the alchemy of our degradation
and the silences beyond heart’s beats and breath.
For the subconscious clockworks will fail and
our limbs go weightless-seeming or black hole dense
and we will know it is not sleep–
For matter goes unlost, easing into loam’s warmth
or windblown, caught by the jet stream and
cirrus-frozen where atmosphere thins to purity.
For there is order. Progressions of hours into days,
ideas of time forged by motions. Stars birthed from
nebulae, stars gone nova. Dust to different dust.
For there is a taxonomy of decay without which we
could not speak of our cessations, utter our change.
But for these we would never die the proper words.
A.E. Ash is a writer, nerd, and mooncalf but not a baker or candlestick maker (and nobody said anything about butcher). She writes poetry and speculative fiction and lives the U.S. with her super-rad husband and felines who do nothing at all to help her achieve world domination. You can find her on Twitter at @dogmycatzindeed or on her blog, www.aeashwrites.wordpress.com.