Let’s imagine they are benevolent.
Let’s imagine they are looking for something true.
Let’s imagine they almost find it here.

Perhaps the smoke will still be drifting, walls of it charging
untethered across the charred landscapes, the only remaining
witnesses, our own unblinking dead. Perhaps by then the fish
will all be belly up, hot acid ocean still moving with the moon
like a holy ghost against the silent beaches.

When those travelers arrive to inspect the rubble,
may they find our music, evidence

of the souls we carried. May they find our stories
and know we sought to understand each other.

May they find our paintings, photographs, our sculpture and poetry,
artifacts of our longing, our seeking, our endless hope. Proof that we tried

to love this place, however clumsy, however fear-driven and hate-stained, still

may the art ache with its fierce love, its faint pulse still echoing.
May this love be our final song. And when

those beings from beyond see, perhaps they will weep. They will rage
and fall down awestruck. They will see it all so clearly.

Then whatever organ equates to a heart
will stir, and so rise, cradling our ashes
in what might be thought of as hands, our ashes
that might be thought of as us, held in tenderness,
in what might be called redemption.