Now that the sun has abandoned you
along with this world and the other stars,
it’s time to empty your backpack of all the tools
you learned to use to forge a life you could live with.
Now you have nothing left, no money, no keys,
only your curiosity about what you could never know
at all, what no one could ever know. Your passions
and your discoveries have not succeeded
in putting you on any paved road.

Wild creatures stampede
through that forest fire, my heart.
Hear it and feel it.

Now you are nothing but the disease
that has come for you and overcome you,
nothing but a self-propelling dream without a prayer
of coming true, nothing but love, disembodied
and throwing itself into nothingness in all directions.
Now you are only the distance between what
you were and what you wanted, and yet you leave traces
of your memories and hopes, your yearning and fears,
as the rest of us go on, sweating and spitting
at the great gaping nothingness closing in on us.

Throw your dictionary out.
You’re going where words can’t go.