IN THE YEAR 2100

I hadn't known
I was dead
until 76 years

after my death
when the last person
who had known me

finally met
her own death
in a train crash

I had been kept
alive in her memory
but now


there was
no one who
could recall me

the colour of my eyes
the sound of my laughter
how I saw myself

so finally
my death
had caught up with me

and I was deader
than when
I had died

it was odd
to die in a future
I had never known

I watched
the atoms of me
fall away

as if
I was
nothing

as if
I had
never been

there were
only dust motes
dancing in a sunbeam

that made
the child
watching them

thinking they were
the atoms
in the school book

he had been
studying until
his mother called him

and he raced down
taking the stairs
two at a time

calling out
"Here I am Mam
here I am!"