Man’s Best Friend Mourns A Speculative Poem Featured in Space and Time

This piece was just published in Space & Time No. 152: July 2026 — Reject Fake Muse.

Trees are blooming on the roof of the penthouse 

While vines are clinging to the skeletal structure of the skyscraper 

The windows having long been broken 

Shards of glass litter the streets and floors of the skyscrapers 

Slowly being ground back into sand  

By the hooves of the deer and other animals 

We thought we’d last forever 

But we were just a temporary blight upon this world 

In our hubris we reached too far and too fast 

Now our cities are overgrown,  

And our windows are being ground back into sand 

We tried to turn our course far too late,  

So, the earth drove us into an iceberg, like the titanic of old 

Now we exist as ghosts haunting the bones of our civilizations 

The only things left to scare are the animals our inheritors 

The only creatures missing us are the dogs  

Mans best friend mourns his passing the headlines would read 

If there were anyone available to write them 

But alas dogs don’t have thumbs  

And never mastered the printing press 

So, the only beings left that care to mourn  

Can only howl their displeasure  

As their progenitors spread  

Mans best friend in all his myriad breeds is doomed too  

To either return to his roots or wither away  

With no one to protect the chihuahuas  

No medical care for the pugs  

Mans best friend ascends back to the wolf it once was 

While silent ghosts watch 

From ashes to ashes and dust to dust our bones are rusting 

Mankind’s cities are starting to look like the pyramids  

In South America buried under the foliage 

Who or what will take our place? 

Will the raccoons rise up and take our place  

After they’ve eaten all of our trash 

Will they one day explore our ruins as an intelligent species 

Or did the intelligence die off with us a failed experiment 

In the grand scheme of the world 

Were we a fluke or will something else take our place  

Something better than us 

Something that respects the world instead of trashing it 

We tried to play God and create intelligence  

Instead we just bred it out of ourselves 

We paid for our hubris, and the world did as well  

But it sprang back unlike us 

Greater and greater demands for power and water  

To run our ever-growing LLMS spelled our doom 

As the poor got free “AI” chat time but couldn’t afford water 

How were we to know that Skynet was impossible  

But our reaching for it would doom us all 

Our bones rusting and our computers have gone silent  

The only sound from inside the data centers are those of crickets 

There is no more constant hum of fans and pumping water 

All the while man’s favorite roommate, cats, are just fine, 

They mourn the passing of their servants  

But most return to nature with nary a glance backward 

While the dogs mourn us, they return to nature weary and worn 

They pass down tales and legends  

Of the eldritch beings who loved them  

Who fed them, played fetch with them  

Gave the best scritches and scratches 

For that is what we were to them  

Eldritch beings with a lifespan so far beyond theirs 

We could raise them and their children’s children  

We held them through the thunderstorms and fireworks 

So loud and terrifying 

We healed them when they were sick 

Mans best friend mourns the loss of eldritch beings beyond their ken 

We didn’t deserve them and we have left them behind  

In a world that we made them unprepared for 

Just as we came to rely on them so did they us 

Now man’s best friend mourns as our bones rust and return to dust. 

Buy your issue here Space & Time No. 152: July 2026 — Reject Fake Muse