'Dead Photo Falling'

A Brief Narrative Rebuttal.

	living fingers fall, four and one dead thumb, from a a hand
mottled and weary.  A hand corroded by age.  Dying hand curls 
nerveless, dropping an old photograph through space and over time.
	Now there is a dead man in the room.  He is slumped behind 
the desk in a slate gray suit, cloth the colour of sky through the
narrow window, sick with anticipation.  A broad gray face slack
before a broad white ceiling.  Head with sparse clumps of thin white
hair rests against the chair's stiff back.  The ceiling hangs even
and alone, forever indifferent and the photo falls...

	Photo blown unwitting through time, through the world and
the mystery waiting on the other side, blown by the wind outside
the word, glitter of frost and fading starlight, immaculate cold
outside the cosmos...

	The Photo blown directly into the collective lap of the gods,
amidst the mindless frolic of their number games.  The gods flicker
and pause their generally perpetual exercises of division and 
multiplication.  They watch the photograph, its simple three 
dimensions and the two dimensions of grainy sepia it sports without
pride.
	They watch, transfixed and eyeless.
	Interest is a rare sensation, mixing poorly with their
alleged omniscience (as the gods argue this point amongst themselves
often.)  The gods study the photograph in silence.
	
	Meanwhile in space and time, miracles occur worldwide and
beyond, slip unnoticed past the distracted attention of the 
governing body.  The blind awake to light and the dirt begins
to sing.  Planets scratch themselves, picking at ancient civilizations
and flicking them away like scabs.
	
	The gods develop eyes in imitation of those seen in the
photo.  Developing limbs and mouths, the gods begin to laugh
out loud.  

	Below continues cataclysmic upheaval.

  	The gods grow clothes for themselves.  They hide from 
themselves all but their brand new round wet eyes.  The gods
mingle and dissolve, shrinking inexplicably into the photo
where it floats flat in extradimensional space.

	Now the gods have gone (or so it seems) into the worlds
that trail behind them like an awkward tail or a thrashing
kite mid-storm...

		gone vacationing in reduced dimensions,
where the cost of living is less.