Photo by Jose G. Ortega Castro on Unsplash
For a second, imagine yourself as a prehistoric bug —
Zorotypus hirsutus, let’s say: pale (almost translucent), minuscule (even for an insect),
with antennae that from a far appear like a set of beads, jewels, teardrops dangling off your little face,
and, if you’re lucky, veined paper wings and blackberry eyes. Imagine yourself beneath a tall tree and imagine, if you will,
its resin gushing from some monstrous wound like blood (only stickier and the color of you). Some falls upon you, pins you to the dirt below, as more and more cascades in thick drips that rain upon your little body, your little body that crumples, bends under the pressure. Lucky you, little bug, without the nerves to feel pain. Imagine yourself living, breathing somehow through the hardening of the resin into amber, as it tans and coalesces into a gem. Imagine claustrophobia, the choking of your senses, the stiffness of your eyes and pincers and antennae.
Imagine blackberry eyes that remain open forever.
Imagine, then, two eyes, two human eyes. Insect-pale bar the blood vessels and the irises, rings of soft, mottled turquoise, two eclipses in their centers, which tighten and widen ever so slowly. Imagine the skin around them, the skull behind them, the sags and wrinkles and hairs that shiver: Imagine nitrogen in a breath. Imagine -196° Celsius. Lucky you, the cold comes in too fast to feel. Imagine a heartbeat that cuts itself short, neurons that scatter like fleas, a body too perfectly preserved. Then a final thought, a question, a wish to one day come home, wherever that may be.
Imagine turquoise eyes that remain open forever