The universe is dead; the party’s over.

The stars are dead; the few left we know are embers. A dark sky full of all-but-burnt-out sparks…

We stare as if from the back window of a car speeding away — our late-model Galaxy — it reaches a vanishing point, the red shift blinding us in a blink, a Bang.

Those stars, those sparks …

All that’s left from the cosmic bonfire that burned so brightly once, the Party of the Universe, billions of years before we even arrived — the Big Bang, we call it now.

To us it seems like an instantaneous Bang, but it lasted longer than eons to those who know time better than our tardy selves. We party crashers are too late. All that was is gone.

We throw a party in our own honor.

We poke among the ruins with our rockets. The absences deafening.

We live in the dying glow, bask in the pale light that dims even as we speak.

In this last exhale, life as we know it, a fading echo. All creatures departing from this farthest shore.

***