After The Fall
By Cheyenne Nimes
WHAT IS IT made of, this thing that will kill us? Carbonado: Black diamonds. Chicxulub in Yucatan. Came down & went like locusts, leaving behind one crater & 1300 year cold snap that stretched around the world. Their high arc drew a soft light down on the bloodbath. Saltatorial. High above your head. The air in the curve expanded & we breathed below them… You’ve seen ‘em, right? Star bits. You just want to look right at it. You think it’s a hero for coming down. They have more edges than faces. Necklace with a tiny diamond pendant in the shape of a human skull. Or a white imitation diamond—you may be wearing it—a layer of grief. Things you don’t know what on earth to do with, things you can’t take with you. Everything inside of the fallings. And the cratered aftermath. The broken stones coming to know what you know, how the sky evaporates at a certain point, merges with outer space in the exosphere, until becoming the only indication of an outside world without going out to space. When you are the only ones, you have no need to distinguish your kind from others. Black diamonds date back 2.6 to 3.8 billion years. And after all that time, isolation begins to weigh. Once again, to touch land. So sky & ground can meet. Choking off loneliness. Geologists say continents are masses of light, sheets of light. We are stardust, we are golden. We are the known pieces & where they fell. You remember in Luke, the line about the stones crying out to the Lord? Diamond dust became a cloud of gas from which our solar system condensed. The way a drop of blood can maintain fall in a perfect sphere all the way to the end. From where I don’t know, going where I have no idea. Not only do we have a particular path to follow, but on some instinctual level, we know what that is… & it’s not going to stop for anything.
- - -
bio: 2009 winner of DIAGRAM’s hybrid essay contest, I just graduated from the nonfiction writing program at Iowa. I was a 2009 writer in residence at the Iowa Art Museum. An e-chap Coming Apocalypse Attractions has just come out on Gold Wake
By Cheyenne Nimes
WHAT IS IT made of, this thing that will kill us? Carbonado: Black diamonds. Chicxulub in Yucatan. Came down & went like locusts, leaving behind one crater & 1300 year cold snap that stretched around the world. Their high arc drew a soft light down on the bloodbath. Saltatorial. High above your head. The air in the curve expanded & we breathed below them… You’ve seen ‘em, right? Star bits. You just want to look right at it. You think it’s a hero for coming down. They have more edges than faces. Necklace with a tiny diamond pendant in the shape of a human skull. Or a white imitation diamond—you may be wearing it—a layer of grief. Things you don’t know what on earth to do with, things you can’t take with you. Everything inside of the fallings. And the cratered aftermath. The broken stones coming to know what you know, how the sky evaporates at a certain point, merges with outer space in the exosphere, until becoming the only indication of an outside world without going out to space. When you are the only ones, you have no need to distinguish your kind from others. Black diamonds date back 2.6 to 3.8 billion years. And after all that time, isolation begins to weigh. Once again, to touch land. So sky & ground can meet. Choking off loneliness. Geologists say continents are masses of light, sheets of light. We are stardust, we are golden. We are the known pieces & where they fell. You remember in Luke, the line about the stones crying out to the Lord? Diamond dust became a cloud of gas from which our solar system condensed. The way a drop of blood can maintain fall in a perfect sphere all the way to the end. From where I don’t know, going where I have no idea. Not only do we have a particular path to follow, but on some instinctual level, we know what that is… & it’s not going to stop for anything.
- - -
bio: 2009 winner of DIAGRAM’s hybrid essay contest, I just graduated from the nonfiction writing program at Iowa. I was a 2009 writer in residence at the Iowa Art Museum. An e-chap Coming Apocalypse Attractions has just come out on Gold Wake
0 Responses
Post a Comment
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
