Electric City

Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, she clicked off

She sent coldcurrents to the surface to halt the earth

in its galactic trajectory

It was operation brain freeze, a global hypothermia,

her last chance

of preserving Earth

And as she watched our sun plummet on

without us, she reclassified herself

with the unasked question

Of a planet without a solar system

The first dandelions of the season were pulled back into the ground

Your wet braids froze on the way to school

It took them sixteen-too-many hours to realize

the sun hadn’t really set, but was only shrinking in the distance

The broadcasters flickered out

by what they were calling the Texan Ice Age

And the politicians blamed the laws

that they spilled blood to keep from passing

Don’t worry, kid, it was their own blood too

Once our lights finally went out, you went out

You found your steel crown and stepped out under the night

You conducted circuits from the sky and drove them into ground

And you cried for a war between light and ice

Glowing electrons paraded the globe, the cold crept away

Your voltage took the streetlights for a two-step,

the ice hid under your skin

Our glacial darkness became a lightning rod

and the orbiters hurried close to our renewed gravity

But you turned blue and fell toward the ground

and shattered with the ice’s reign

From up above

The earth was a city

You, my electric princess, remade the sun

Remade it right here on Earth