Fantasy Magazine, Issue 79 (May 2022) by Adamant Press

Author:Adamant Press [Adamant Press]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adamant Press
Published: 2022-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Methuselah Performs A Magic Trick

Alyza Taguilaso | 297 words

Methuselah star (HD 140283) is a yellow subgiant located in the constellation Libra. It is one of the oldest stars known. With an estimated age of 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years, the star appears older than the universe itself.

When the great city fell

it wasn’t into ruin

but into the black well of yesterday. Trapped

within a spyglass that could peek into the past,

out flowed floodwater from a storm stirring

for two million years. A single crack

from a failed sleight of hand,

like shackles designed to unfurl

underwater but stayed shut. Was it sorcery

or science? No traces left, no bones

for the sirens to nibble on. No fossils

from this crime scene. Centuries later

they would call it legend, call it

lesson – this arrogance

of Atlantis, of Babylon. Golden cities destined

for calamity. Their names used each time to justify

the air strikes, the rain

of bullets, the birth of bombs digging

basins deeper than the ocean floor. Another reason

to believe in a god mired in man’s hungry image.

What happened to their ghosts? Bereft of breath,

violently pulled into the past

by the gravity of the oldest of stars. Methuselah

whose heart pulsates light and loneliness –

the first of fission and visible things.

Would she have sung to those specters

of what her three thousand eyes witnessed?

How the universe started expanding

with longing. How planets learned the heavy syllables

of their names in earthquakes and hurricanes. How moons

would know to command tides

and lycanthropes. How each thrash of wave,

how every gnash of tooth, every animal call

was a knife that scraped at the firmament,

eager to find warmth. Chafe at each surface of space

for a room wide enough to call home.

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