DEFINITION OF TERMS
prepared by Ryan A. Rodriguez inspired by the poetry, stories, and themes found in this folio apocalypse, n. - Here lies the bones of the universe—wrapped in its coffin of endless nothing underneath a graveyard of dead suns. No lungs to breathe the murderous air nor stomach to be filled with charred remains. All that’s allowed to devour is the void, a spherical spinning shape protruding against the dark space. The resulting magnum opus of eons of science, mathematics, and hubris, writes all the universe’s answers on the black ocean, where everything sinks. The bottomless pit remains stagnant—until something once dead claws through the silence. ash, n. - “From ashes, we come, to ashes, we return.” You don’t know if that’s something you’d wholeheartedly believe in for you didn’t bother with things outside your fists and the punching sack in front of it. All you knew is how to break every bone of your body, clench the pickaxe till your grip showed nerves to strike the gold of the Earth, all the while carrying each boulder of dynamite that no passing bug accidentally explodes on your feet. You’re quite charming really, but it’s as if you lived no life for yourself at all, and that this spherical world isn’t this biomass of scattered Jurassic fossils, stretches of blue ocean, and filters of tectonic plates. But this outline of a Roman-chiseled nose, stubbly chin, and a set of handsome white teeth that likes to call you “dear”. Certainly, you’re not the brightest, and you’d sooner learn that even that didn’t prevent you from knowing. Knowing that even in your godly arms of Atlas, the world has gone to a pile of ash. awake, v. - Eyes melt open on some flare of dandelions up in the sky. The split second before our consciousness settles in the real world is a painting so beautiful—a rose gown floating down a wedding aisle, and sunshine sparkling in my lungs, all bouncing in falsettos and melodies till the petals drip, down to the ashtray. I would have given more than miniature parachutes out of my beating heart then. I would’ve stitched makeshift locks around the words, “Will you be my beloved?” Because it doesn’t hurt to eternalize a dream, but staying awake all night, staring at everything you could’ve done differently, does. black, adj. - Would it be so weird to say my parents like a color? I theorize they have a thing for formality, like how they like to look dignified in three layers of button-up shirts, sweat sticking against flesh, and polyester all for someone they don’t even know. Or some kind of tradition, with how adults form lines of black suits and sounds of wailing on green cemeteries. Or how their eyes sink to an empty bleakness when they look at me. I’ve known this blankness for as long as I was born, for as long as I’ve known—them—that it became all too familiar for me. Like a home that I really want to scrape out of, but the dry paint is too thick to escape away from. wreckage, n. - The smell of dried flowers sings along the rocky coastline, and the grainy foam tugs my legs to reach for the remains. Whatever remnants live and scream for the shore, the dead weight muffles me tighter with the sand. And here is my messiah, the bearer of truth—the cold grasp on my limping limbs. Yet I’d
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