it should sound like a voiceover
sent back to earth
from a space station
in the future.

if you could muster
the tone
of a history book
summing up this civilisation
in a single sentence.

you would be close.

***

how would you say it

if you were to tell the story backwards

if you were to turn the words inside out

if you were left only with letters?

how would you say it

if you were to devise an entire theorem

to explain pattern and form

to account for dynamics and tempo

and then break it?

how would you say it

if you were to say nothing at all.