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Words Running Toward The Margin

"Cryptobiosis, or What Will Happen to All Our Emails When We Die" by Zach Peckham

5/27/2022

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Zach Peckham is a writer, editor, and educator. His work has received Pushcart nominations and has appeared in jubilat, Territory, Poetry Northwest, Always Crashing, on the Academy of American Poets website, and elsewhere. He currently teaches at Cleveland State, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and is managing editor at Cleveland Review of Books.

Cryptobiosis, or 
What Will Happen to All Our Emails When We Die
so here you might imagine an arrow
 
shot from a bow and traveling deep into space
 
very fast 
 
but let’s be honest
 
it looks like slow motion at this distance
 
woooooooooooooooooosh
 
leaving a location on earth 
 
you pick 
 
but probably the Midwest
 
going out and on for lightyears
 
imbued with importance
 
carrying a message
 
our last great hope or something
 
a sign that we were here
 
all the mothers 
 
heroes explorers doctors artists writers musicians philosophers humanitarians pilgrims city planners politicians MRI technicians software developers middle school English teachers well-tipped golf caddies NASCAR drivers sailors child actors magicians’ assistants managers of Subway® sandwich shop franchise locations air traffic controllers social media influencers DJs event planners arborists and dads 
​
our final memory of having lived
 
shooting majestically out into expanding space
 
so slow
 
: 
 
MAKE MONEY AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE NOW! WITHIN 5 MINUTES YOU COULD BE MAKING REAL MONEY WORKING FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME!
 
:
 
precious golden arrow
 
carry us gently into infinity
 
:
 
you wake from a dream about the future
 
you are hungover or have lost the ability rise under imperfect conditions 
 
hours of sleep, units of hydration, levels of blood sugar and cortisol 
 
an ongoing state of lack
 
this requires substantial effort
 
:
 
a being may see its life
 
as a discrete sequence of events
 
lined up like dominos
 
waiting to topple
 
one moment into the next
 
each after the last
 
:
 
this other might see
 
a long and gentle arching 
 
beam of multicolored light
 
to be ridden like a slide
 
or kind snake
 
:
 
a geoduck (phon. gooey-duck)
 
is a giant saltwater clam
 
with an elephant trunk
 
overspilling its shell
 
no brain or eyes
 
but prized
 
for its distinct savory flavor 
 
crunchy texture
 
apocryphal aphrodisia
 
living 160 years
 
:
 
OPEN NOW TO LEARN HOW TO MEET AND ATTRACT BEAUTIFUL WOMEN! EVEN IF YOU AREN’T TALL, RICH, OR HANDSOME
 
:
 
at night 
 
you see lights
 
flashing in the pines
 
:
 
the average human life lasts 79 years
 
the oldest koi fish
 
lived 226
 
:
 
when are they coming
 
to get you
 
:
 
so then an exploratory committee was formed
 
and the leaders were very pleased 
 
because the readouts promised excellent conditions
 
for a condo with a patio
 
development of more beachfront property 
 
salt water blue and fine
 
good yellow light at the center
 
all these benevolent marsupials roaming the yard  
 
beautiful stuff carpeting the ground
 
breathing life into the air
 
which was also full of all these other things
 
singing and breathing
 
about everything else
 
but then someone on the excavation team
 
discovered a critical error
 
in the calculations
 
an untreatable cancer
 
had already infected the body
 
and was beginning to spread
 
:
 
maybe you see it now
 
just a glow starting around the edges
 
:
 
RETIRE EARLY AND NEVER HAVE TO WORK AGAIN: SAVE MORE AND WORK LESS, IT’S THAT SIMPLE!
 
:
 
tortoises are frequently cited
 
as the longest living terrestrial creatures
 
Harriet, a giant tortoise
 
disembarked from Darwin’s ship
 
after the long and harrowing expedition of 1835
 
and died in an Australian zoo in 2006
 
:
 
Adwaita the giant tortoise
 
was gifted to a British officer
 
East India Company, 1750
 
lived vigorously until his shell cracked 
 
2005
 
:
 
today the oldest tortoise
 
lives on the Island of Saint Helena
 
stalking the dewy grounds 
 
of the governor’s lime green plantation house
 
blind with no sense of smell 
 
but very good hearing
 
190 years old
 
Jonathan
 
:
 
the arrow slipping silently through the Kuiper belt
 
leaves an orange dusted transit path
 
ribboning smoky memories of us outward 
 
:
 
or maybe an impression
 
indents on a plane made by waves of light
 
tracing a shape
 
:
 
if each word equals a pocket of air
 
that stays inflated unless it’s deleted
 
is this a marker
 
:
 
5 SIMPLE TRICKS YOU CAN START USING TODAY TO EFFECTIVELY REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU LEARN
 
:
 
Lin Wang, Asian Elephant, 86 years
 
Greater, Greater Flamingo, 83 years
 
Cookie, Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo, 83 years
 
Thaao, Andean Condor, 80 years
 
Ol’ Billy, Horse, 62 years
 
Andreas, European Brown Bear, 50 years, World’s Oldest Bear
 
:
 
warm-blooded life seems to have the hardest time
 
keeping clung to earth
 
one exception
 
homo sapiens
 
Jeanne Clement, b. February 21, 1875, d. August 4, 1997, 122 years and 164 days
 
Kane Tanaka, b. January 2, 1903, 119 years, oldest living person
 
:
 
the ocean teems most densely with immortals
 
this may not be surprising
 
:
 
Freshwater Pearl Mussel, 250 years
 
Greenland Shark, 392 years
 
Icelandic Ocean Quahog, 507 years
 
Giant Barrel Sponge, 2,300 years
 
Black Corral, 4,265 years
 
Glass Sponge, 10,000+ years, max lifespan unknown
 
:
 
but it’s just not that impressive
 
when a sponge outlives a human
 
:
 
EXOTIC MIRACLE FRUIT BOOSTS ENERGY, IMPROVES LIBIDO AND REDUCES STRESS: CLICK HERE TO ORDER
 
:
 
you try to remember a time when you could make it 
 
through a day without some shard of noise
 
piercing in to strike you with wonder 
 
at whether you’d made the correct decisions
 
if the path from there to here wasn’t
 
where else you would be
 
:
 
you are stuck watching a movie of someone else’s life
 
:
 
in 50 years
 
the number of dead people on Facebook
 
will start to outnumber the living
 
by 2100 
 
some estimate the total deceased 
 
with profiles
 
at 4.9 billion
 
or
 
the entire population of earth 
 
in 1987
 
:
 
much more impressive to think
 
we have already become immortals
 
that our selves outlive ourselves
 
when the afterlife is data
 
a server farm is Valhalla 
 
:
 
the arrow gliding softly into a tide of oncoming waves
 
parts them in an opposite direction 
 
encrypted chatter mingling with radio static
 
as your credit card numbers and social media handles 
 
brush hands with deep space distortion
 
:
 
the sky goes dark again 
 
you know they must be there 
 
hanging back
 
like always
 
watching us make our go of it
 
hear them cheering
 
they’re waving big foam fingers and drinking beers in the bleachers
 
if the earth is round it’s a ring
 
for pro wrestling
 
:
 
SEAFOOD WELLNESS BREAKTHROUGH: ASTHAXANTHIN ACTIVATES THE FOX03 ‘LONGEVITY GENE’. THE TRUTH DOCTORS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW
 
:
 
seamonkeys, nematodes, waterbears
 
some names 
 
for brine shrimp, roundworms, and tardigrades
 
who stop their metabolic processes at will 
 
should conditions become imperfect
 
levels of water, oxygen, toxicity, temperature, environmental solute concentration
 
falling out of balance
 
into a state of lack 
 
brine shrimp, roundworms, and tardigrades
 
simply stop themselves from living
 
and pick it back up later
 
when the timing is better
 
:
 
turritopsis nutricula, a small hydrozoan
 
the immortal jellyfish
 
passes repeatedly backward into earlier stages of its lifecycle
 
changing one cell into another indefinitely
 
theoretical lifespan infinite
:
 
WANT TO TRANSFORM YOUR BODY FROM FAT TO FIT? NOW YOU CAN! OPEN NOW TO CREATE THE BODY YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED
 
:
 
the worst thing to imagine
 
is that aliens have already been here
 
looked around
 
shrugged 
 
and left
NOTES:

Facts about humans, animals, space, earth, and the Internet are casually researched and sourced from Googleable articles and shallow Wikipedia dives. Collected here:
 
  • https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/29/facebook-dead-users-2100-oxford
  • http://time.com/5579737/facebook-dead-living/
  • https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/11-animals-that-live-the-longest
  • https://www.worldhealth.net/news/jellyfish_that_can_age_backwards_are_inv/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms
  • https://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/unit/text.php?unit=5&secNum=4
  • https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46811618
  • https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overview/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_shrimp
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematode
 
Text in all caps is a blend of actual spam email subject lines and clickbait ads with some light embellishments. None of this content is copyrighted.
 
The “golden arrow” is an echo of the gold photograph records aboard Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and exiting the heliopause into interstellar space as of 2012, still in transit.

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