there will never be so many sea lilies.
they will never roll like meadows and lace
their brittle eyelash hands, nod
their heads and kiss. their endless
fields will smother
on ash. they will bow their necks
and break, the ending world
will fall on them like snow
soft shards of dead things.
one day you will lift
your withered hand and touch
the coffee cup to your paper lips,
and it will shatter at your feet
and that’s
all. there will never be so many
of your eyelashes, or the stars.
one day you will kiss your dog’s
forehead and leave him with a friend, walk
into the woods and never
come out.
one day the sea
will burn, and life will choke
again. buried corpses curdled black
into the slow revenge of
the Siberian Traps. you will hear on the news
everything you knew but
couldn’t stop.
the tanks will roll in.
they will bring the villagers
past the barbed wire to see what
was done in their name, and some will cry
some will even mean it
one day you
will
until then, the asphalt
buckles with dandelions. until that day
you will walk the dog, and brush your teeth
and a fungus that eats radiation will grow in
Chernobyl.
until you die, and after
there will be your fingerprints
scrawled on the palms
of beautiful creatures, loved ones
who will also die,
and what you leave behind
will matter, spread like fields
of chipped exoskeletons
across the sea floor,
because to
matter
and to last forever
are not the same. after you
and after the white rhinoceros, after the
ash kills the lilies and blacks the sky, after
nearly all the sea
is snow
there will be the lilac tree
until there isn’t, and there will be
another fungus, soft saffron-yellow folds
devouring its roots. there will be
little scrambling creatures who rush
into the absences, and after you
they will drink the carbon air
and flourish somehow even where
you couldn’t.
after you and
everyone,
there will even
be sea lilies
not so many as before
but enough.
“P-T” originally appeared in SLICE #26.
