“Midnight” (poem version)

“It’s 5 minutes to midnight”

Chirped the clock.

 

The soft, damp soil gave in easily
a robot planted a mushroom into soil—
for this was the time to plant crops.

 

It looked at the tiny mushroom in awe,
this tiny insignificant thing.

 

“It’s 2 minutes to midnight!”

 

The robot left its farm,
slowly walking back to the shed to recharge.
Red lights flickered inside the shed eerily,
pulsing on and off… on and off.

 

The insignificant mushroom planted,
now attached to the soil.
Its mycelial network crawled deeper and deeper,
dissolving further and further,
eroding away at the soil bit by bit.

 

“It’s 1 minute to midnight!”

Thunder clouds rolled in,
their dark bellies dragging across the sky
like worn funeral shrouds,
scars of the past, present, future,
reincarnations of death.

And the world fell silent.
No insects, no rustle of leaves—
just a growing pressure in the air.

 

“Midnight.”

Lightning struck the shed,
setting the wood ablaze in an instant.

Splintering

Collapsing

Smoldering

Burning the whole shed to blackened bones,
and with it, the robot charging inside.

Its metallic body blistered.
Its memory banks wiped themselves to static.
Its frame buckled under its own weight,

Its little green eye flickered once, then twice,
and faded into the fiery inferno

 

“It’s 1 past midnight,”
the clock did not chirp.

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