The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.

I sit on the train toward Chicago and mourn the avocado softening in my kitchen. This, too, is practice, avocado being the smallest unit of grief. It’s rock and ripe and gone; rock and ripe and gone. Which should be a lesson.

Every day of my life has been something other than my last. Every day, an extinction misfires, and I put it to work.