11 Comments
User's avatar
WritingWithWater's avatar

"Meaning created humanity." stays....

Mark Crutchfield's avatar

thank you @WritingWithWater

it leaves a quesion for me…

Can art exist without humanity?

Perhaps.

Can humanity exist without art?

I’m not so sure.

Renée Lucia's avatar

I love that the procedural voice never breaks. It somehow becomes more human because it refuses sentimentality. Every cycle simply records what happened and lets the reader discover what it means.

🪢

Mark Crutchfield's avatar

Thank you for seeing that, Renée and that was exactly my intent ♥️

Renée Lucia's avatar

I think readers often go looking for the answer when the real gift is the shift in the question. Your ending quietly changed where I was looking.

Mark Crutchfield's avatar

That’s very true, Renée. Thank you

Dean M's avatar

Wow. Speechless.

Art WAS. Before humanity. Reverse= negative.

Be Budding's avatar

Blue is your colour.

Dipti  Vyas's avatar

Mark, I had to sit with this one for quite a while before I felt I had even begun to unpack it.

What first appears as a clinical investigation slowly becomes an inquiry into what survives when memory does not. The hand reaching for blue, the eye lingering on dusk, the unfinished melody… none can be justified by utility, yet each feels profoundly human.

Your final turn stopped me: “Meaning created humanity.” We often imagine ourselves as the makers of meaning, but perhaps we are first shaped by the meanings that gather within us long before we can explain them.

This poem left me wondering whether what we call memory is not merely the recollection of events, but the quiet accumulation of what the heart refuses to relinquish.

A remarkable piece. One that rewards lingering.