The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

As a child, I couldn’t believe my luck: born in the best country on Earth. Now I know better. So what. Good morning, what’s done is done is.

This sense of impending catastrophe is an illusion, however, because the trauma never quite arrives. It never arrives because it has already happened. —Grace M. Cho

Atrocity fractals [like a fern]. No more nature metaphors. It fractals. It itselfs.

In lieu of proximity to firefighters; in lieu of the ability to speak the airless language of ghosts; or to reverse the logic of molecules; or to force Exxon to call the hurricane by its rightful name; or to convince my friends not to launch themselves from the rooftops of every false promise made by every rotten idol; in lieu of all I can’t do or undo; I hold.

And in the swath between them, loneliness. Just that: loneliness. I thought that was all love could give me. I’m sorry. I thought I’d seen the future. I thought I knew the words to our one wild and unfathomable life. Forgive me; I see it now. I wasted so much time being wrong.