. . . join the adventure . . .

Not the struggle before, not all the years and pains and rare joys, the sorrows and sufferings—sadly, none of that interminable interminable is brief. Just the moment itself (which does admittedly stretch out a bit on page, on screen): a quick snap fingers for those lucky/unlucky to be eyes wide open as it comes: the white ceiling above the hospital bed, the half-loop track for the curtain to ring; the scant flicker in the track’s aluminum of the machines all around you, their murmuring green, yellow, red. Ah, like constellations, you think, and (from within your failing corpus) you ignore the bodies and hands and the (life-full) breathing of those gathered around and you raise your eyes and try to tease out, in the lights, a pattern.

You are a restless wanderer, acting on the everhuman urge to seek the something new, the real, the thing that means.

You are a sailor, born upon the tide, gazing into the night’s sky, searching for meaning … you are a dam builder … you fly a starship lol … you sort of do a lot of things? … and you keep going, keep returning, you’ll be back (again, and again, and again).

You are a child, terrified to sleep at night, all those faces on the wall—

You are a reader, turning a book’s pages, searching for…a glimmer? clarity? answers? distraction?

And then it comes oh it comes the sky it flickers is gone the captain has been behind you all this time the captain now reveals a hidden pistol and slips a shot into your heart, and there it goes the blood galloping away from you, away, pouring through your fingers, and the little head above dangles leers and laughs and the dying woman shoves you into the street before runaway horse and you lower your head and kneel penitent on the tracks before the oncoming train;

the sky flickers; the sky flickers; the sky flickers.

The sky is gone.