In the Museum of Empathy, Year 2172
I. A cigarette butt flickers like a distant neutron star, a memory collapsed to ash.
Fingers trace the dying heat, and lungs tighten, remembering someone’s last quiet
breath, drifting through cosmic silence, searching vainly for gravity’s comfort.
II. A watch, worn thin by centuries’ palms, its ticking a whisper from deep space, each
second an orbit completed, a revolution unfinished. Hands tremble – no heir to inherit
the ellipse of time. A lineage extinguished in the soft sigh of gears.
III. A glass test tube, pristine as starlight, cold and untouched since genesis. Palms curl
around its emptiness, taste the feverish pulse of discovery, the ache of revelation, an
equation shivering into truth. Atoms within vibrate, humming with forgotten awe.
IV. A book, pages crisp as frozen planets, rests on a shelf in infinite patience, words
like dormant worlds. Hands brush the cover gently, and loneliness pours forth, an
untold story, a silent galaxy – never known, never loved.
V. A sweater, fibers frayed like comet trails, crimson-soaked nebulae etched in wool, a
universe caught in threads. Touching the fibers ignites galaxies of grief, a father’s orbit
collapsing, a star’s heart ruptured, carrying the supernova weight of the child he
couldn’t save.
Visitors pass through constellations of past lives, feeling, understanding, cradling
echoes, objects orbiting empathy’s black hole, from which no sorrow escapes unheard.
About the Author
Hamit Özonur is a Turkish poet, writer, filmmaker and educator based in Porto, Portugal. His poetry work often blends surreal imagery with science, history, and speculative themes, drawing inspiration from the İkinci Yeni movement (from Turkey) and contemporary science fiction. He has a background in astrophysics and mathematics, and his writing explores the intersections of memory, identity, and the natural world.
