He is old now.
The paint keeps breathing for him though.
He contemplates when hunger became habit.
At first, he only wanted to keep the world he’d made.
Keep the word he made.
Then the wanting widened.
He observes himself,
jaw unhinged, fists sunk into what once was hope.
This is how we stay alive, isn’t it?
Borrow from their future.
Taking control instead of giving wise fallow.
The unseen, the transliminal all around knows it’s a feeding.
Addiction to division, comparison and exile.
He speaks with the cadence of a Conquistador.
Work harder. Longer.
Manifest your destiny.
Conquer unflinchingly.
It’s for your own good.
Just a little bite.
Relief when feeling briefly young again.
Maybe it’s the fleetingness that’s missed again.
His knuckles brace.
His arms never knew embrace.
Confusing consumption and continuity.
Victim instead of purveyor of time.
But no matter, what life remembers how to begin again.
Miracles and faith ensue, as they always do.
Along with other cosmic shrugs of grace.
The little ones build softer and quieter from the ash,
altars to life instead of temples of sacrifice.
Despite siphoned awe, they emerge with sharpened saws.
Using their edges to speak even more eloquently.
They learn to cast wider vision in instead of the other out.
Ruin runs down the river into renewed rhythm.
New lexicons! Pluriversalism, even!
Saturn, half-dead and half-aware,
will call after them with a mouth still raw with memory,
asking for stories, for purpose, for more,
not realizing that the feast has ended
and the world is learning how to live without that kind of unaccompanied hunger.