A Refuge of Self-Deception

Everyone reaches for a shard of immortality—
a gleam to flash in the cosmic audit.
Some chisel their names into monuments;
others whisper them into the seams of the universe,
hoping the wind files the message
in the correct eternity.

Most get routed through the usual channel—
a granite placard, dates stamped
like misprinted batch codes,
telling passersby:
here lies a carbon temp
whose contract dissolved quietly.

Lower still drift the poets—
the graceful write-offs—
crafting metaphors no one requisitioned,
reciting sonnets to drifting dust
and one baffled housefly
clocking overtime.
They get no graves.

They’re rerouted to a containment district—
Amazon Books—
a cul-de-sac of forgotten language
where paperbacks arrive like stray birds
and gather in gentle piles,
murmuring their unread lines
to fluorescent skies
that never look down.

A soft-afterlife warehouse,
stacked with abandoned imaginings,
each book aware of its fate:
to fade with dignity, in print,
aligned beside its silent colleagues
who never cleared the ledger.