there won’t be newspapers with letters to the editor objecting
to how the city council handled the crisis.
No TVs to turn on. The hand-cranked radios too hot
to handle, but then we won’t have hands. No psychologists
to diagnose Post-Traumatic Death Disorder,
no couches to lie back on as a glistening orb of light.
The only people who don’t die alone
are Siamese Twins, when the world ends.
What lurks deep in the ocean will not know,
they will be so used to the darkness. When the world ends,
I need it to be quick. I keep no excess water
but that which lines my veins, I buy canned food
but eat it that same day, and there’s no time
to picture my elderly mother in her hospital bed
hitting the call button frantically,
wondering where her cats are and what day is it
and where her cats are and what day is it,
why the ground beneath her is sinking. No time.
When the world ends, I’d like to be
cartwheeling. One hand rooted solidly
to splitting ground, another reaching for
the meteors plummeting from a fiery sky,
my legs forming that perfect V of birds
flying so high away from the destruction
that their small throats close and they too, fall.