Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

We, the immortals, the brazen, renewing life, we never stop changing, not for ourselves, not for each other. The universe unfolds and we cannot stop it. The language changes and I change and you changed too. And now I’m remembering the old sounds, the half silent aspirated p’s the sounds that disappeared as things changed again and again and then, yes, again. And now this is what we wear. And now this. And now we are naked and now we wear high necks and then low. And the style rolls on. Things change, not like seasons but like stars, rolling in ever changing patterns across the sky.

And at one time, I knew you. I knew you plugged in and turned on and online and on board and we were new and flying through a world we made. And then it was too many people and then starships and then colony worlds and long travel and long sleeps and new places. We watched from our ships as those spiders changed the planet underneath us, terraforming from red to green and blue, the sunset colors of the planet turning into a new spring. Then we landed and worked the land and came down from our heights like angels come mortal. We starved and worked and prayed to new skies but we were still, we were still us, come down, unplugged, logged off, turned off, and then you turned off for good. And I followed you.

This is the last great adventure, you said, It’s the last one. I want to go to gently into this night, this nothing. And I said no. And you said this is change. This is change. All must change.

But I cling to the underside of creation, on a new world, feeling old, desperate against the change that leaves me without you.