body uncertain.

 

Remember a car journey back
from zombie tag: nerf guns
holstered around your neck
with scarves? Time speeds up as
you grow older, X says
in the driver’s seat. For now
I don’t want to imagine you:
what’s that quote about the forbidding of
soothsayers? Every syllable of recorded
time is a hole in the chainmail
a crack in the door through which
the messiah might – like a dust particle –
float over the threshold? Who knows if
everything will go back to normal, or
if there’ll be X future: maybe
we’ll live in crystal palaces as body
simulations, trade characteristics like Pokémon
cards, spit over the bridge of hanged billionaires. 

There will be baptisms
of cat girls in virtual rivers; you will
retreat to beautiful valleys and watch wind
through the topiary. I unironically yearn
for this, with all my heart. I doubt –
even writing this – you’ll be so lucky. Even
refusing to imagine the future/you.
You will look nothing like me
will have a different voice, with luck.
You will definitely have less money. I will
love you, conditionally, the way I always do
but maybe not. Leave it to the air. Prepare
the way, please. I am coming for you.

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