An analysis shows there is a 50% chance that we are living in a synthetic reality – Scientific American
If life is a lucid dream or some near-perfect
computer simulation, do I risk waking up
to a world in which I can’t embrace you?
I was so young when I came to feel that
death is as simple to understand as the eons
before our birth: we are not, and then we are,
and then we are not again. I’m a mystic. I
love the weight of the cosmos, how it feels
in the palm of my hand. I reach for your
hand in order to hold on to all that I wish
were eternal but stand to lose. I can’t dwell
on loss, least of all when thinking of you;
and if none of this is real, if there are
truths stranger than our brief mortality,
all the more reason to lie down together and
demand that the earth reveal what it knows—
to discover who we are when stripped of fear,
our bodies trembling at the edge of reason.
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
