he atop the pile of bones asks, shifting his feet against her skull, crushed against the child’s ribs crusted with ash and oil; asks, while the feathers melt and the smell of rot beneath him leaps like porpoises whose skins slide against the rubble of schools and homes; asks a god he sees with his own face, a father; asks an imagined race light years away from this furnace, having sent probe after probe to explode or drift or crash without sound where nothing breathes; he asks with what is left of the atmosphere, sucks in its smoke and turns it to wonder; he stoops, while the heap begins to shrink, as it folds him into its decay, into the mass of dog atop monkey atop lion atop horse atop urchin atop fern atop algae atop the millions of himself; at last, wrapped in their warmth he fragments with the fraying throats and fronds that might have answered once; now they embrace him as the microbes burst from his belly, join the feast; and the stars reel on, as they always have; as the mountain cools to dust; as wind stirs the ash to unconscious dance; as thunder breaks on a fearless sea; as acid waves dash against the rock, each clap unanswered.

he atop the pile of bones asks, shifting his feet against her skull, crushed against the child’s ribs crusted with ash and oil; asks, while the feathers melt and the smell of rot beneath him leaps like porpoises whose skins slide against the rubble of schools and homes; asks a god he sees with his own face, a father; asks an imagined race light years away from this furnace, having sent probe after probe to explode or drift or crash without sound where nothing breathes; he asks with what is left of the atmosphere, sucks in its smoke and turns it to wonder; he stoops, while the heap begins to shrink, as it folds him into its decay, into the mass of dog atop monkey atop lion atop horse atop urchin atop fern atop algae atop the millions of himself; at last, wrapped in their warmth he fragments with the fraying throats and fronds that might have answered once; now they embrace him as the microbes burst from his belly, join the feast; and the stars reel on, as they always have; as the mountain cools to dust; as wind stirs the ash to unconscious dance; as thunder breaks on a fearless sea; as acid waves dash against the rock, each clap unanswered.