Untitled | Abigail Xiong (11)

The Prisoner 

Time freezes. 

The void echoing all around him, 

in magnitude and continuum, 

just 

amplifies the vacancy of his thoughts, 

every fiber of thinking, 

of being, 

scattered to the darkness. 

I wish I had said 

I love you. 

To whom? 

Someone that said they’d be 

with me no matter what. 

Who? 

Where are they now? 

Where are they now? 

Where are they now? 

Echoes reverberate, 

Fracturing further 

whatever fragments remained of his existence. 

1 

3 

4 

7 

2 

Why must you pretend? 

Because his life doesn’t end, this imprisonment doesn’t end. 

1 

3 

4 

7 

2 

Numbers, bridges, to the real world— 

How many more years before 

I go back? 

The Attorney 

The judges are wrong. 

Haide said so, two decades earlier, as he fought, 

His eyes wide open, pleading, 

Affirming not 

Guilty

Not 

Guilty— 

Now, 

The alchemy she mastered, 

To turn the lost into the saved, 

The long-awaited confession 

she’d pried 

from the actual perpetrator 

Of the crimes 

Haide sacrificed himself for, 

Would it be enough? 

“Do you know 

the number of people this court sends to Cygnus X-1, 

and who turn out to be 

innocent?” 

Silence bounces around the high-ceiling chamber 

As hope wells in her chest. 

“And what if I were to tell you 

That all of them 

Are able 

To be 

Retrieved?” 

That maybe one day 

I could see him 

And show him 

I’ve been fighting 

All along. 

Wormholes 

Twenty years 

To discover 

How a prisoner in a black hole, 

Whose body had undoubtedly 

Contorted, 

Stretched, 

Compressed, 

Could emerge restored, 

And as her hands 

Deftly wove the 

Tunnel, 

13472, she screamed, 

Reaching her hand in— 

13472, I’m here. 

All sensation started to disappear—

Haide, I’m here. 

Until warmth— 

Haide, I’m here. 

Wrapped around her fingers 

And held on. 

Aurora, 

I love 

You.