Endling

by Maria Reva

People don’t live history, they live their lives. History is a catastrophe that passes over them. —Chus Pato

Translation apps drained transnational love of its mystique, Efrosinia and her assistants lamented.

How the many gastropod species have evolved to live anywhere on the planet, from deserts to deep ocean trenches. How they have gills to live in water, or have lungs to live on land—some, like the apple snail, possess one of each, to withstand both monsoons and droughts. How some

Snails weren’t pandas—those oversize bumbling toddlers that sucked up national conservation budgets—or any of the other charismatic megafauna, like orcas or gorillas. Snails weren’t huggy koala bears, which in reality were vicious and riddled with chlamydia. Nor were snails otters, which looked like plush toys made for mascots by aquariums, despite the fact that they lured dogs from beaches to drown and rape them.

“A dangerous thing, early success,” a bachelor told her during one date, describing his own investment ventures.

A time stamp. More precisely, a death stamp. The moment a species vanished.

“The world doesn’t work the way you think it does. It finds a million ways to disappoint,”

why must a country be bombed before we care about it? Yurt Makers: The world is a whore.

I would also like to thank Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for including my name on their sanctions list of Canadians who are now forbidden from entering their country, one of the biggest honors of my literary career.

Ukies have border collies; they are just like you. And, perhaps also just like you, they once thought disaster only befell other people.