The Map of Beyond

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Map of Beyond

Ghouls, our mirrored reflections
echo forever in a gloryless abyss.
Cold words, bad deeds
bay louder, never wistful fading.

Sonic reverb kicks through bloodlines,
sons and daughters hold ghosts in their hearts.
Stacked end over end, it metastasizes,
only the black, expanding universe calls time.

Does the energy absorb in the heat of a million marauding suns?
Does it grow cold like stale terrestrial love?
Withered to nothing on a brown vine,
plucked by some fluorescent caterpillar

It pulls, it pulls apart, that dark matter vacuum.
Where else would what remains go?
The smoky truth that hides in plain sight:
the dusty, dusky soul cobwebs out forever into the black expanse.

Benjamin J. Kirby is a writer living in St. Petersburg, Florida. His poetry is published in Gabby & Min’s Literary Review, the Ulu Review, the Red Noise Collective, Half and One, Wingless Dreamer, and Cathexis Northwest Press. His fiction won first place for its prompt in the 2020 Lewis County Writer’s Guild competition. Read more of his work at BenjaminJKirby.com.