The sun swells up. We all incinerate. There is no innocent skin. The fat falls, boiling, from the bodies of babies as well as murderers, saints and sinners achieving equality in the bright red light of a dying star.

A symphony of screams will rise up with the dust and blow into space, afloat on a brutal solar wind. The universe is fickle. What once it loved, it will ruin, crushing the brittle bones of its favored children. A blue planet, so round, the apple of its eye, and now destroyed.

This is just the closing of my eyes. Reality is concrete reflecting heat like a moon staring down a futuristic, blood-colored dawn. There's no sleep, just the sheets sticking to you; a straight-jacket, making you a prisoner with the help of your own sweat.

All this time, I've wanted to be angelic, to know God, to be beyond science. But this city is steel and glass and physics. There are no wings on anyone in it. At night, my dreams turn to space, to the long dark that ends in fire. When I wake up, the streetlights are as yellow as sulfur. As artificial and soul-less as anything else this world has ever made. There's no God in this place. There never was.

Only the science of the universe will unmake what man has done. Gunshots down in the alley. Someone decided not to wait. Not take his chance with the sun.

08/20/2005

Author's Note: Writing.com slam entry. Write a prose poem about an urban fantasy, said the prompt. This is partially inspired by Battlestar Galactica's Cylons and their religious beliefs. I'm a nerd. Sue me.

Posted on 08/20/2005
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