She whispers infinity into my neck,

time stands still on eternity’s edge.

Wayward crow pecks at the moon,

pixies dance gleefully on lucid stars.

We lay limp from endless passion,

trembling at the brink of a cliff.

Our souls take flight without rhythm,

misted shadow casts somber reflection.

vanishing muse offers more than succor,

love endlessly spins around into darkness.

Boundless labyrinth guides you through,

spiritual tears supplant our fears,

melting in vast wells of blue infinity.

Eternity surrenders to let us pass by.

#Challenge #Infinity #WhisperOfInfinity

I was just looking through the entries for the current contest, "What would you say to someone who doesn't like poetry?"

It seems most of the entries are poetry.

"Yeah, I don't know, I'm just not a huge fan of poetry."

"Ah, let me convince you by reading you a poem about why you should like poetry."

"..."

*Puts on reading glasses* "Sit down, this is a longer one."

I often wonder if I am truly living. What does it mean to be alive? As I feel numb more often than not, I am not sure. I even question if I actually exist, or if I am just some figment of someone else's imagination. Is that weird? I'm human, but I don't feel real. I am just some ball of mass floating around with no purpose other than to survive. But why? Why struggle so much to get by when breathing hurts most of the time? Wouldn't it be easier to let the current take me away? Should I just sink down to the depths of the earth and not return? I wonder this all too often.

if we were

alive enough

we could do more than see colors

we could feel them in our red beating hearts

in the dark blue aches in our bones

we would know how it felt to be real

again

if we were

strong enough

we could open our mouths and pour out the words of nations

feel the orange urge to speak our minds

and we didn't fight it

as it

filled us

if we were

alone enough

we would be purple in our misery. light purple

fizz that exploded out of our pores

and became something new

so we wouldn't feel so alone

this is something new

it's enough

There's a period of waiting before our shift begins. We, the catering team, all sit together, a row of black uniforms.

I'm looking down at my phone because no one is talking to me. Instagram. Facebook. NYTimes. But my neck is stiff, so I decide to look up.

Everyone else is talking, engrossed with each other. Smiling. Gesturing. Nodding.

I watch for a few moments, then I look down again. No one spoke to me, but that's ok. I don't want them to.

Dear Stranger,

I see you everyday. Yes obviously, I wanted to talk to you every time we crossed paths. But something stopped me from doing so. So here is what all of it meant.

Behind every reluctant smile was a "I wish we could talk but I am in a hurry."

Behind every enthusiastic and melodious Hiiii was a "I didn't know you hangout here but anyways I am glad to see you."

Behind every awkward elevator encounter was a "Should I talk or will it seem really desperate?"

Behind every casual and mandatory "What's up?" was "Can I at least know your name and probably your Instagram handle?"

Behind every prolonged stare was "I had a bad day and I want you to sit down and listen to me rant."

But I never talked to you. Because I know that if you talk, you would become an acquaintance. If we start exchanging greetings, we would be those casual greeting friends. If we start talking in elevators, we would be friends on social media, losing our friendship to virtuality. If you did sit down and listen to my problems, you would become my friend, just like my other friends.

I don't talk to you because I don't want to ruin this strange bond we share. We do not expect anything from each other. Without exchanging words we know what the other one is going through. We just see each other and know things and I hope it stay exactly the same. In our silence I find peace and chaos are forgotten.

Sincerely,

The stranger you see every day

There's always tomorrow. That's a little joke we temporal physicists like to tell, because in truth, who knows?

We stretch time by approaching the speed of light, bend time as we follow the intense gravitational fields embedded in space-time, and even - well, from the viewer's perspective - make time virtually stand still as we cross the event horizon of a black hole, while from our perspective we get stretched and yanked and pulled forward to our doom in the naked singularity at its center. That's all assuming the singularity isn't really a singularity but, instead, it's a wormhole to another point in space --- or time. But I digress.

Tomorrow. It's an intriguing concept. Because you do know, of course, that by the time tomorrow gets here, it is by definition the present and no longer tomorrow. It's a time in the future that will always remain in the future and never be known. Saying "I wish tomorrow wouldn't get here, because ..." Well, don't worry, it doesn't. Never does. Unless ...

There's a theory that you can jump outside the space-time continuum you inhabit, hitch a ride on another one to a point in the first continuum's "future," and peek through a hole as an "observer." By not sharing the continuum, the events you see are ones that are not pre-determined to become the present when you return to your own place and time. By maybe, like Schroedinger's cat, the very nature of observing what this future will be like determines its outcome in your reality. Then, you're left right back where you started, at the continuing present without a single tomorrow ever coming to pass. A given event you are expecting, such as a test, or a marriage, may materialize in your present, but, again, its outcome cannot be predetermined, only the event itself. It's enough to make your head spin faster than the black hole's singularity (if it's a rotating one, that is).

So when you invite tomorrow over for dinner, don't be surprised when it never shows up. Instead you're left with the ever-present present, and unless the laws of physics suddenly change, you always will be. But, hey, you'll have lots of leftovers.

#prose #SF #science #time