“Echo After the Last Star”

“Echo After the Last Star” (Structure: fragmented cinematic poetry / non-linear refrain / collapsing timeline form) [Dust Before Genesis] The clocks forgot their wrists and oceans swallowed names. A quiet fire crawls across the galaxies, slow as old regrets. Someone said forever— but forever sheds its skin. Even constellations rust in silence. [Half-Refrain — whispered twice] The world will surely end. Not tonight. Not gently. But someday with tired eyes. And still— your hand fits mine like gravity remembering its moon. [Verse Written Backwards] When the last cathedral of light collapses, when the stars exhale their final gold, I hope we're laughing about meaningless things: coffee stains, rain on windows, the way your voice bent my storms sideways. Because even the stars have a lifespan. Even heaven burns through its own lungs. [Interlude: spoken like a transmission] So, just relax— we're here together. No prophecy can steal this room. No apocalypse can edit our heartbeat from the archive of existence. Listen... The universe is dying beautifully. [Chorus That Arrives Too Late] Enjoy it while we're here. Dance inside the falling ash. Sing louder than extinction. Kiss me like tomorrow misplaced our address. We were never promised permanence, only presence. And maybe that is holier. [Bridge — fractured repetition] End. Echo. End. Echo. Love survives strangely. In photographs. In atoms. In the scars of collapsing suns. [Final Refrain / fading] Believe that in the end, our love will echo forever. Not as bodies. Not as names. But as vibrations wandering endlessly through the ruins of starlight. And somewhere beyond the final dark, something will still remember we were here.