Parchment People

If parchment people
were the world,
like the texts of old,
each of us would be a book
of rich cursive flowing
with emotions and ideas.

Many of our pages would
be illuminated with
the passions of the moment.

Yet as the years passed
and we endured the changing
light and heat around us,
as we succumbed to the
toxins in the atmosphere
and the poisonous elements
in our own composition,
we would yellow with age.

If parchment people
were the world,
like the texts of old,
there would come a time
when our vellum would darken
and crack like old leather,
crumbling away.

In our disintegrating age,
all of our pages,
all that we contained,
would become indecipherable
except to a clever few.

First appeared in Strange Horizons