Response to MacKenzie's final week memory, Final Week

MacKenzie,
I love the imagery here; evocative and detailed, I can see the caves you describe clearly. I also like the tension between the past and the present, the evolution of our species, and the questions you ask to create this tension and progression. What I would suggest is, answer some of those questions you ask. While it is a type of reflection to ask the questions, a deeper reflection might come from the speaker creating a life, thought, an experience for the people who once lived there. I mean, what makes the speaker even ask such pointed questions as "Did they watch their fire in the dancing pit cast shadows over the caves?" It almost seems that the speaker already has an image of just that in mind, an image of maybe a child casting shadow puppets against the wall, of the long legs of a shadow of a young girl distorting her length? The options are endless and, of course, you would want to make sure to stay away from the expected imagery, but dedicating time to imagining the lives that once lived there could make the last line so much more resonant. What makes the empty caves like graveyards and why does the speaker want to make noise because of that? Creating the existence of life in the cave, even if it's only in the speaker's mind (research could help here), makes the absence of it seem wrong, seem lacking, seem, like the speaker says, like a graveyard.