She walked alone bathed in borrowed sunlight and the fires of distant suns.
She walked along the edge of civilization
         With high rises and cable TV to the left and the primal sea on her right.
She walked on the dust of billion year old stones and on skeletons.
She was watched by alien eyes that saw her only as an interplay of shadow and movement.
She walked by a fire that was consuming sunlight
         Hoarded away in a chemical nest before her grandmother was born.
She did not see the orgy of killing that was taking place just ten feet away
         Under the lapping waves of the dark ocean.
She heard voices crying out to each other in languages evolved from the clicks and grunts of
         Naked animals hunting in the dawn of time.
She walked where the dead bodies of shipwrecked sailors had washed up on the shore,
         Beyond caring that they were the first of their countrymen to reach this new land.
She heard in the distance music created by manipulations of pure mathematics
         Playing rhythms that were oldies by three thousand years.
She had skin darkened by tubes of gas which gave off radiation like the sun
         When electricity was passed through them.
She wore brief clothes spun from the decay of prehistoric life
         And carried a sweater that protected her inside varying artificial climates.
She hummed a bit of tune composed by a man that no living person had ever known
         That was being used to sell automobiles.

And as she walked, she thought,
         “Gee, I wonder if Gary will be at the party? Is this bikini too tight? Am I too fat?
           I wonder if anyone can smell the beer on my breath? What day is this? Yuck, I smell
           fish.”