Forgotten

Floating in the dark nothingness looking down at Earth
A small, blue green marble of silence holding a multitude
There is no sound here, only the rhythmic in and out of my breath
The stars are everywhere and still I am nowhere
At this moment I am not missed, not thought of except by me.
Even the light that stretches from the sun and reflects off the Earth
No longer touches me, but

Down there people are sleeping and dogs bark at prowlers
Down there people laugh over dinner in a posh eatery
Down there a man beats his wife to relieve his anger
Down there a preacher is obsessed with making the world in his image
Down there a litter of infant cats has been thrown into a dumpster
Down there wild animals are being slaughtered to extinction
Down there a woman pays for a tummy tuck, Botox and an eye-lift
Down there poor people wait months for medical treatment

Down there qualified people lose out on jobs because they have less than perfect credit scores
Down there women are showered with acid because they dare to educate themselves
Down there children die of dysentery because their refugee camp has no clean water
Down there homosexuals are thrown off tall buildings because they are infidels

Down there young, rich white boys riot because they are bored
Down there young black boys riot because they have nothing to lose
Down there oceans are rising and dying all at once
Down there grandparents live in homes out of sight of family
Down there the mentally ill are homeless and ostracized

Forgotten

And yet they are invisible from here, because

Up here Earth is a beautiful pale agate blue dot, crowned in icy caps
Up here the silence of that revolving sphere is deafening
Up here the chaos is only apparent from the tight swirls of storm clouds
Up here the only visible source of life is Earth’s rolling flashes of lightning
Up here Earth’s sprites reach up past its atmosphere to say we are alive
Up here the rhythmic pattern of my breath will slow, slow, slow and be no more
Up here I stare at the gently floating, spinning rock, suspended
Up here I levitate with discarded satellites and space debris orbiting the planet

Forgotten