*The Cacophony, 2024 — on the cusp of ‘25, on the cusp of eternity.*

Is it a privilege to witness the world as it shakes while I wither and wait and I could not have orchestrated it because I was the worse for it, to be in pieces like the moon’s slivers and exposed as the bare branches that quake under the wind as it shivers I luminous lily with a half-life voiceless hear the universe humming destined to vanish into void with the rest of the banished && to love everything is also to love nothing, who will interfere? seasons of displacement I decay in a wilderness that I wanted I waste like a winged thing dragged down from devout darkness once I beheld all things in their majesty curtains drawn for tragedy now my soul is sealed—would I have chosen it, would I have rose to it! the absence of God whispers and whirs, to lavish and long below the dome of stirring stars that speak listen voyager forsaken in your flesh prison it is not that you cannot hear but that you do not listen