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Order this writing in the collection book Life on the Edge this huge volume is available for only $2395 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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The Perfect End
Eric Obame
If I could live for as long as I wished
A mere five billion years or so
Long enough to see our dying sun
Become an Earth eating red giant star
The hydrogen food he consumed to glow all gone
Starving, burning for a means to live
Father will reach for whatever is near
And his closest daughter—our sister Mercury
Will be his first last meal
For dry as she is, she won’t be enough
To stop his hunger from killing us
What a sight for my eyes it would be to see
Our dear sun magnified by a factor of five
The rivers and oceans will begin to dry
Although the icebergs will have melted
And many species of plants and animals will die
Father will continue to grow in size
His hunger unfulfilled
His stomach unfilled
He will reach for Venus
Our sour tempered second sister
And without hesitation, he will swallow her too
What a sight for my eyes it would be to see
Our dear sun approaching, filling most our sky
The surface of the Earth will burn
And everything will die
As father, in his last ditch effort to survive
Tries to make our beloved—our once beautiful
His third daughter—our mother
His next sacrifice
He might reach her
Or maybe by then, we will have spun far enough away
To avoid his dying grasp
Either way, it will be the end
The woman we knew—who gave us all life—who nurtured us as we grew
Will have burned to death
And the father we knew—who gave us all life—who nurtured us as we grew
Will turn into a pathetic white dwarf
A corpse spinning without a purpose until the end of its time
A relic of a glorious past
Unlike his big brothers who blow up when they die
Spreading the seeds of life that will give rise to new stars and planets
Unlike his even bigger brothers who blow up, then collapse on themselves
To form the cosmos’ most powerful element—the black holes
Our mighty and brilliant father will just fade away
Until he becomes nothing more than that pathetic white dwarf
That is how I want to die
That would be my perfect end
To go out—to go into that final goodnight with him and her
As everything that gave birth to us dies
As our remaining sisters freeze
As our solar system goes silent and black
If I could live for as long as I wished
A mere seven billion years or so
Long enough to see our Milky Way die
As she collides with her sister Andromeda
It will be the greatest marvel ever seen
As the nearest galaxy to ours appears in the skies
Of whatever new Earths we will be forced to occupy
And night after night, Sister Andromeda will get bigger
Until she fills all the space before our eyes
Some of her alien homes and neighborhoods will be visible
With a child’s telescope or plain sight
The two sisters will pass through each other at first
Like blind ghosts flying toward each other from opposite sides
There will be a few bumps
There will be a few crashes
But for the most part, everything will turn out fine
They will exit each other, in much the same way they entered
But for their tails, brought together by gravity
It is a taboo attraction—that taboo that will pull them back toward each other
And merge them through a mating dance into one super-galaxy
That is how our dear Milky Way will go out
Along with her sister Andromeda
Stars and worlds will impact
The stars and worlds on the edges of both sisters
Will be donated to the black, radiation-filled, chill of space
Then, like two magnets of opposite polarity
Like two lovers seeing each other from afar
The two cores from the once separate galaxies will move toward each other
To form a super-massive black hole
Eating every star and planet along their collision course
A super massive black mouth for a super newborn
That would be my perfect end
To depart—to wave that final goodbye
Having witnessed the most beautiful sacrifice
Two could make to give life to one
If there are still human beings at that time
If we are still bodies, and not just minds
Free to explore the infinity of the cosmos
Without the restrictions of space and time
If we are still bound to our Milky Way
Then that is how I want to quit life
That would be the perfect end for me
To exit with the species
If I could live for as long as I wished
A mere googol years or so
Just long enough to be there at the end of the cosmos
To die, as it dies
To see how it began
In black
The last star born would have long burned out
The dark galaxies would be scattered across all infinity
Like corpses in coffins dropped in the sea
Traveling through the water never to meet
There would be nothing left of the space I see today
But for the cold emptiness
And the mighty black holes now withering away
Until finally, they ceased to exit
And that would be the end of our space
That is when I want to go out
I want to exit just before the last hole fades out
I want to dive into it, and then die, just before it vanishes
Perhaps with its final strength, it will push me out the other end
And in another reality, I will be relic to what was
But more likely, I will be disassembled down to the atom
And as the last of the hole withdraws, everything that was me will be lost
That would be my perfect way to leave life
Having seen all there is to see
And reach the end of my time, as the universe that bore me finishes
