THE SLATE WIPED CLEAN

Everything could be taken

from us at any moment. Existence,

life ended by a heart-attack

or an aneurism, matter wiped

out by our universe's collapse

from a state of false vacuum,

and we would never know.

The slate wiped clean.

If everything would go on

after us, eternally, it wouldn't

be so tertible to cease

in knowledge of existence

imprinted into eternity,

our brief, separate firefly existence

forgotten but shaping things,

some minor act of ours

spreading forward in time,

bringing down small dominoes,

merging with the actions of billions

to place a crowd of strangers

to save the world a century

or a millennia from now.

For everything to be lost

we were part of, not only

our small role ended but

the grand stage gone,

 that would be more terrible

than concept of personal

death itself, the last thought

expiring into nothingness -

for we live for far more

than merely ourselves, being

a cell in the body of humanity

in time and space. As long as

it lives, our lives have meaning.

?.-15.04.-16.04.2025