Strange Eons

"Hello?"
she says
to the dark.

"Hello?"

"Am I alone?"

And there is no ear to hear her.

She is warm
and nested
and wonders if they are all asleep
(for there must be They
she can feel them
still, and all around)
a slumber dark and lost.

"Hello?"

She reaches for a hand
a face perhaps
someone she can hold
someone she can wake
and finds what she is reaching for.

His eyes, or her eyes,
are open and unblinking
and do not so much as quiver
when her fingers brush across them
(how wet they are, and soft, and cold).

She is warm
because the bodies keep her heat.

She is not alone.
She is here with a thousand thousand dead
forever.

And the sun is gone
and the moon is gone
and all the stars have died
and all the light is dead
and all the dark is dead
and she is pinned, here in its belly
in the cold
in the deep
by a thousand thousand dead
forever.

And there is scarcely time to scream
before an ambling frozen hand
idly rises from its owner's reverie
to pull her further down
to hide her from the air
so that her screams so shrill would not wake up the dead.

And she bites the fingers in her mouth
and tastes the old formaldehyde
that dews under its skin

And the only one here living
in all the dark and dead
did sink below
(was pulled)

and in the sunless aeons yet to come
there would be no more disturbance.