Wave
A response to the Fermi paradox across the electromagnetic spectrum
Ella Sheffield is secretly 10^27 atoms in a trenchcoat. So far, her attempt to impersonate a human has gone off without a hitch, so don't blow her cover now! You can find Ella staring at space, rolling handfuls of dice, or madly scribbling cryptic notes like a wizard who's about to die in the next chapter.
In the right light,
you hear my violin-string prayer
cast like a lifeline into our shoreless sea
If there is some night-streaked vessel or planet
(and if you are there in a year or a thousand)
and if, in this scratch-static refrain,
you find my voice —
will you risk your fingers
on the edges of our broken silence?
In the right light, our ill-defined separation
is nothing but a random perturbation
in our countless epochs
of shared history
we are new photons singing free
In the right light our bodies glow like dust
and our bright filaments of matter paint the firmament
with each breath like signal flares proclaiming
Look, look, there is life here, I radiate
that you may somewhere see
That you might spin solid ground out of
those silent exploding graveyards of lost worlds
and I might watch moons form above your inchoate home
In the right light, I cannot know if what I see is color
or just the illusion built from my mind’s dream
of understanding yours
Is what you see is as beautiful as these
ribbons of dawn and feather and rippling glass?
Let your black box shine with rainbow, that I may learn
the arcs and shades of your own illusive optics
In the right light, my petals are painted
with these secret stars
They are a beacon for your eyes only
scent-trails dancing across the blue-soaked sky
Let my words drip thickly from your tongue, and know:
sometimes, to give and take is to be alive
In the right light, you see through
to my hardest parts
Break your teeth on my rocky core
When all this is gone, my stratified bones
will testify that the cosmos has never been barren
(Don’t cry — I am already in the past)
In the right light, I rip apart
and I die
and the fungus that blooms
above my corpse is a warning to you,
louder than any whispered light or half-built peace
But I, dazzled by our galaxy’s heart,
believe we can find each other
beautiful
(When you
see me
I fall
into place)
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Cosmically lovely.