It is cold.

No, not cold, but cooling

And still, except for bacteria

That favor flesh. I can hear them, not hear, sense them,

Our ears are dead, scrabbling around sensors retracting into

My core. My. We for a few cycles of twenty-sevens, hardly worthy

Of a subroutine, we for eating, we for fucking, we for gazing into where-whens,

We while spacetime glistened with the possible like grape seeds buried in the fruit, crushed against our teeth,

We when blood sluiced from our nostrils and, clinging to this union like a spider, she begged the web to hold her life,

We until our heart was still, until her mind slipped from mine and moved our lips in quiet thanks as she departed.

Up-gathered out of her I will be we again, we who watch, who decohere, shaping the quantum,

We who court three-branes, seeking a way out, the we of my amaranthine compiler.

In the multiverse she is many-where, alone in her body, zoetic,

Growing weathered and fine as she might have done apart from me.

Her gratitude was that of the soil for blossoms;

I showed her the uncurling petal.

She gave me the garden.

It is cold.