Planet For Sale!

the sign read.

For Sale By Owner,

the sign said,

smaller;

there was a picture, too,

a faded smile too white by the light of the moon

around which the sign orbited,

along with Titan, Europa, Io, and Pluto,

among myriad more flashing teeth like torches,

traversing the system,

lures bobbing on ripples solar,

on bars of whale song

(not the owners; not pests, either).

Still, no bites but bites from the biters.

Best Offer,

had been added,

smaller still, below,

Fire Sale, Everything Must Go!

was largest of all,

printed forty-two stories tall,

but it could barely be read because

NOT FOR SALE

was scrawled across the sign in humanity-red,

faded and battered and beaten and dead,

nearly,

the sign blinked and flashed as it had,

it read as it read,

Welcome to Earth! This isn’t just your new world,

it’s your homeworld.

Welcome home, it said;

the sign blinked and flashed again,

for a moment, gone black like eternity,

or entropy,

or both at once and everything in

between,

beneath the seams of dreams,

unconscious as we seem,

floating, drifting free of time,

waiting,

eternity beginning,

awake, suspended, slowed, bending,

telomeres shrinking, warping,

fuses burning,

entropy knows only endings.

Planet for Sale!

the sign read,

layered behind what so many others had said,

wanted,

did,

attempted,

protested,

demanded,

forbid,

each a version of what lied atop it all,

always in red,

humanity said:

NOT FOR SALE;

(but then we fled).

Dead as dead is dead.