The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

what’s the other opposite world; if we knew its name could we call it; if we called it would it come;

Try not to time travel, says the voice in my meditation app, as I fast-forward to everything I haven’t yet remembered to be afraid of—

the great metal tolling as everyone I love drains back- wards out of our coils into the great scream of space, will it happen— when will it happen—

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