As Somewhere Else

within cacophonous chatter sliced by staccatoed laughter flowing from bodies pressed together by walls and circumstance hands gripping glasses cups swirling liquids amber red white clear hands dragging cigarettes hands pulling hair from eyes beneath midnight sky opening onto vacuum emptiness crossed by planets asteroids starlight an interstellar object a comet which will become human-named ‘Borisov’ crosses an imaginary threshold becoming only the second human-detected traveler from the great deep to edge into Sol's shallows speeding sunward to cross behind a planet where a party unfolds where a he has just met a she and he is struggling through whiskeyed fatigued anxiety to say something not profoundly stupid as part of his mind drifts towards the analogy of the ice melting from his long frozen heart and the ice melting from the long frozen planetary poles the analogy of the looming doomsday of the latter and the possible foreboding of the former for just as melting ice caps release long trapped carbon to devastate the world might not a melting heart release long trapped things to devastate that heart's mind that heart's soul that heart's body he calls himself back to himself finding himself searching for some bit of wit or charm or something anything to extend what had been a perfect moment of connection with her now fast fading into failed small talk's whispering nova and as his lips part to ask some small question somewhere deep in a forest the last individual of an insect species never touched by human minds fades into oblivion and as it does the words from his lips attempt to cross a semiotic chasm but fall short plummeting into depths of meaninglessness as she reaches for a friend to help translate between them as he and she do not fully share language the friend translates and she laughs an ambiguous laugh his interpretation suspends between the laughter of shared enjoyment and the laughter of polite disinterest because he has long ago buried his courage in the deep graves of failed loves because he has long ago extinguished his courage in the ashes of disappointment he departs with a smile and a spoken hope of future conversation which she returns with a smile and a nod which are for him no less ambiguous than her laugh as she and her friend turn from him as he steps backward through the crowd as somewhere nearby a joke lands its mark as somewhere inside a glass breaks as he steps onto the street and heads home as somewhere in his country fascists hold children in cages and refugees in death camps as somewhere further a crop field completes its withering as his feet carry him home as his mind carries him again and again across the shadowy terrains of the conversation he wishes he had spun differently spun better as somewhere else racists plot hate crimes as somewhere else workers must choose food or medicine as somewhere else bosses plan restructuring as somewhere else imperialists rest hungry eyes on foreign lands as somewhere else ancient forests burn consuming communities of nonhuman people and human people older than the people who everyday drive their knives deeper into the planet's heart into the world's heart who everyday renew themselves with the blood of bodies that are extensions of themselves the consuming of which becomes the consuming of those who are consuming all the eating of the future by the present which is nothing but a shadow of an emptied past as he mounts the steps into his home passing a raucous party unfolding next door as he drops into a nightly extinction wondering if the falling asleep of one is always rehearsal of the death of all as the silent interstellar object Borisov continues its journey unable to grasp the depths of the words which send the sleeper into his sleep the old latin memento mori remember you must die