A descent in four movements

Firn.

n.Snow that has outlasted a summer, but has not yet become ice. Scroll, and fall through eight hundred thousand years of it.

I — Layers

Every winter

leaves a page.

Snow settles, packs under its own weight, and seals a little of the sky between its grains. One page a year. Nothing is ever edited.

II — Ash

Somewhere, a

volcano woke.

The sky went dark for years. The ice kept the sulphur — a thin black seam through the white. A lost summer, filed in perfect order.

III — Air

The oldest air

on Earth.

Eight hundred thousand years ago, before there was a we, this breath was sealed in snow. Nothing has touched it since.

Breathe in.

It has waited eight hundred thousand years for someone to.