When I die

I think I’ll live forever

as something that really happened.

 

I will be real

but forgotten

like a moment from your seventh birthday,

buried twenty feet deep

in a mind filled with billions

of unmarked graves like that one.

 

This cemetery

stretches on for countless acres,

but you’ve lost the address

and cannot pay a visit

to all those who still remain there.

 

And that’s what time is like,

a sequence of events registered by the cosmos,

some still detectable and measurable

but others too small to retrieve.

I think I’ll be like one of those.

 

But real.

 

As real as any explosion

or collision or formation

we still talk about today.

And that is how I’ll stay eternal.