et al.,

Hello—goodbye. Each day is a childhood. What is remembered does not die. Life is a breakable vessel. Let not another hand hold it for you. Even as it breaks.

[et al., @deeptimealien]

Every year, the sea moved a little farther away. The old pier ended in grass. Boats were stranded.

One evening, a girl found the last wave. It crossed the empty beach alone. "Will it keep going for evermore?" she asked. Nobody answered.

She followed it into the sea■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

Morning. The town discovers that the sky has a ceiling. It is silvery-white. Birds do not leave the trees.

By noon, people are pointing at it, asking, Where did all the planes go?

The boy who kicked his ball at it is still waiting.

"Will it stay up there for evermore?"#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

The river is low
The rabbits cross in dry grass

The boy lies in his room
The switched-off lightbulbs hang upside down like bats
In slow rivers he hears his mother's voice
In quick rivers he hears his father's—
Evermore

The rabbits cross in wet grass
The river is high■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

The boy enters the library. He searches for a book. He finds it. He opens it. The words fall off the page. He turns the page. He can not stop the words falling off the page. He puts the book back on the shelf. Now, all of the words are in his shoes and socks. He leaves■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

The alphabet falls from the sky. It breaks on roofs and across streets. People stop speaking. A boy gathers the fragments, lays them out on a table. He puts them back together. The alphabet does not work. It is the wrong way around. He calls his girl. She knows best■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

For thirty years
the town kept a spare moon

Nobody ever remembered who built it

The night the real moon was seen falling—
the spare was lifted into position

Afterwards—
the tides were too late

And every reflected face was slightly older than the one looking into it■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

At midnight
the museum unlocks
the paintings leave their frames
a storm moves through the west wing
a sea rises through the stairwell
it does not touch the walls

by dawn
the arthouse is flooded

the paintings return to their form

each one of them
containing victory■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

At midnight
I gamble with vowels

the consonants
are too attached
to themselves

I place the letters
among the constellations

and wait

some letters do not return

by morning
one star is missing

The word is not■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

THE FIRST ROOM

Before I had a name
my mother carried me
through months of midnight

I sometimes wonder
if that is why
I still trust darkness

a closed door
a quiet room
rain against a window

some part of me
keeps trying to return
to the womb■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

I try to remember when the world first felt solid
It was not a moment
More a habit forming
At midnight
I still expect small wonders
A light in the wrong place
A door already open
Most days nothing answers
But I keep that expectation anyway.
Even so
I wait here
This night■#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

After the Great Drought, my father kept a jar of rainwater in the cupboard. Every year it grew more valuable and less useful. At midnight he would check it with a tealight, like a moth to glass. When he died, I poured it into the garden. A rainforest came with the birds ■#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

Proximity.

Eclipse. Lips upon lips.

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

We are assigned to observe each other’s Earth memories as they are replayed in the clinic. The doctor says it improves proximity accuracy. I am given someone I have never met who insists he was once my brother. The record denies us. Observations are marked as complete■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

Here, on the moon, we are assigned friendships we did not have on Earth. The clinic confirms proximity records before any conversation is allowed. After that, we are assigned families. Most requests are denied before they are spoken. Relationships are issued per records■#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

Today is clinical intake day for Earth arrivals. More primitive flights come in than the system can register. At the clinic, they check our forms before speaking our names. Those cleared are sent out into supervised routines where we are made to forget without exception■
#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

@jshaw_six And a cold dark ale, maybe.

[et al., @deeptimealien]

We drove the lunar motorway past orchards beneath glass domes. We stopped for burgers at Mare Tranquillitatis. We watched people leave the cinema carrying oxygen tanks and popcorn. The moon had become so wondrous that Earth was brochured as a day trip, weather permitting■#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

The woman I loved kept a trout in the bathtub. It watched us through the glass wall while we undressed each other. Last night, when she kissed my mouth,it threw itself against the surface of the water and onto the bed, leaving small wet remnants of scales on the sheets■

#VSS365

[et al., @deeptimealien]

@DanielC55186873 I am glad you think that.

Thank you.

My friend.

[et al., @deeptimealien]

A woman stands in the doorway with a bowl of cherries. He watches her place them one by one into her mouth. The room tightens with each small sound. She comes to him without breaking her pace and presses the stones from her mouth into his. A remnant between his teeth■

#VSS365