The Terminal Beach

On Worldbuilding 

I could just as well have made a time capsule,
but 80 percent of those are lost to the ground, never to see the light of day
and sometimes there are leaks.

A time capsule is just a tiny, overcrowded basement,
          Or like a rock whose fissures, filled over time by
          minerals from flowing water, now host veins of crystal;
This too is how the Earth was made.

Inscribed for a seeker at a later date:

          The future, like an invasive plant, has contaminated the here
          and now, contaminated eternity.
          The past is just a predecessor.
          And so here are some knickknacks, 
          To make up for the millisecond that is the present.
          The present: cat-like with quick reflexes, you have to wait for
          it to come to you.
          Your fate is in here, in the ground.

          These items don’t indicate any midpoint of history, 
          They don’t imply that these were important times,
          But we have a habit of seeing the meaning in a sign.

          The mirror has to be opposite nature to reflect it.

          The time traveler’s compass is regret;
          I cannot choose where to go otherwise. 
—
These works are presentations of time travel as a closed loop, you return to where you started.
Or they are tricks, 
science fiction.
Nevertheless, buried in a punchline, in the fantasy, in the basement, is the truth
And people are known for their compulsion to bury, or at least their compulsion to dig.

          To try to understand what really happened 
          Is to try to stir coffee and milk apart
—
A capsule is prone to leaks, but the museum’s destiny is also a ruin.
Nothing is good enough for eternity-
Even meaning is found in endings.

The terminal beach exists in our memories of the future; Already, Not Yet.
The terminal beach is wherever you watch the world end.
The landscape is dry and salty.
Your childhood bedroom is now a gym, or an office.
Your toilet paper is made of recycled material.
The base of every volcano is just the whole world.
(You cannot escape Mount Vesuvius, it is everywhere).
Time is a killer and a beach.
At the entrance to its cove:
Cave Canem, Beware of Dog

A hollow object protrudes from the sand.
 
                       —Audrey Leshay