When You Leave, Don't Forget To Turn The Lights Off
When you leave, turn the lights off—
It matters not to me,
For I am the last subtraction
From the sum of humanity.
The stars have blinked their final light,
Planets turned to dust,
The galaxies collapsing inward—
Even silence starts to rust.
Religion is a dim memory,
A ghost caught in black holes,
A story written long ago
To comfort frightened souls.
There are no children laughing now,
No lullabies or cries,
The oceans boiled to vapor
Beneath expanding skies.
The food has all turned to dust.
The fruit to ash and bone,
And the singularities whisper,
But find themselves alone.
The atoms sigh their farewell,
Entropy takes the throne,
I speak aloud my apology—
To the vacuum, the unknown.
No ear to catch my final words,
No god to take my hand,
Just math unraveling slowly
Across a dead, cold stand.
The pistol's echo curls in dark—
A physic with no cause,
An end without a witness,
No grief, no pause, no laws.
So when you go, dear traveler,
Leave nothing, not a spark.
I am the last equation
Scrawled in the empty dark.
When you leave, turn the lights off—
Let the void complete its part.
I am sorry.
Truly sorry.
That no one hears me talk.
Copyright ©
James Mclain
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