text: A presence that pressed upon the mind more than a manifestation that grew from the horizon. That presence upon the earth, a mere afterthought; as if the leviathan had amalgummed its appearance from memories it had conceived or stolen. For its form, such that it can be said that a collapsing star has form, was like stained glass, fractious fragments of a whole. This was our Great Annihilator, as stated in the verse, though it had been some time since I had heard its recitation. Its surface, colliding shards of the possibilities of the cosmic; held together, surely, by some will or intent. For surely the impacts of such violently alien concepts would rend their realities asunder. There it is upon the my horizon, framed like a portrait in my window; nature can be so wicked. I would titter at the notion, were it not that I were teetering, upon which precipice I do not know the answer yet. Now my eyes are upon my feet and not the heavens and I cannot decide which existence would be worse. To stare at the oncoming nightmares that swell like growths on the horizons, or to watch meekly and bleakly as the earth erodes beneath your feet. I have sway over neither, merely where my attention dwells. Despite its distance I begin to make out the details of its mass; the swirling vortex of macerated architecture orbiting about its periphery. The sum of our endeavours upon the land were caught as minnows in the wake of a whale. With its caress it cradling our cities within its outstretched arms, warping mountain ranges and diverting the currents of the seas. I spied the shapes hewn by human hands thrown like a blaze of sand grains; the orders and schools of design indistinct from the distance. I could make but the scantest details of the structures, grand cathedrals rolling into palaces before the melee subsumed them once again into the ruins that cavort as its followers had done, some time ago. There I saw the fortress walls envelope the sanctuaries of those declared heretics, listing temple columns holding aloft the vaulted roof of humanity’s knowledge until at last, for the moment, all is consumed within the aching maw that protrudes like the atrium of a prestigious city bank; from the shores of some land I had yet to visit and assumedly never will. Was it my eyes or did I spy the billowing of smoke from the depths of these vestiges of our histories. Did the trapped inhabitants eek out a conflict whose origins lay mangled and buried somewhere below; taking pot shots from undulating barricades, across spans of nothing, at minarets that wavered in the distance. I pause to listen, as if the cracks of rifles would carry the distance, all I see is the smoke. Perhaps instead the denizens strive for some return to their lives as before, the smoke evidence of some great feast I am not. Does the rattling of their cups give them comfort I wonder. The entity, whose name was known and yet our theologies felt wholly inadequate to name such a thing as it fell, burning, from the heavens. Had it risen as the sun? Had each person, in kind, pondered what purpose drove such a existence; what possessed it to draw within it all that which humanity had created for a higher cause. For within its lengthy shadows centuries of ingenuity were rendered invisible in an instant. Masonry was swallowed and ejected as howled renditions of valour and oppression mingling in inert structures; exaggerated and warped beyond breaking point. Are such actions guided by forces as yet unconcieved, we had asked before and had yet to hear a retort; was this another of our failings, to apply intentions to the forces of nature. Is such destruction a process contrived by intangible axioms set in motion before the conception of the notion of being? This thing that encapsulates the horizon, I strain to gather its proportions; does its stature only increase as the distance diminishes or does it pulsate with growth as its embraces all that lays before it. I cannot ascertain wether the open arms of the behemoth shepard all those within its grasp towards some consuming orifice, I spend my days in hope and fear of the truth of the matter. Despite its approach its dimensions become no more apparent, all that is certain is its grasp grows ever longer; I can feel it tantalising my skin. I leave the window from which I made my observances, for now it can longer be framed within its bounds; I go to meet it in the streets. I see it now, as it eclipses the sun; untethered to the horizon, for it is the horizon. The impossibilities it has bonded with human distortions are beautiful, for what else could be beautiful, there is nothing else. It is above and yet below me is open sky, its surface now crisscrossed with the streets of the city. And I fall to earth And I rise to heaven I see no mouth to consume, only a hand outstretched, beckoning me.