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 want an excuse to change my life.

Am I greedy for comfort if I ask you not to kill my friends—if I beg you to press your heel against my throat—please, not enough to ruin me, but just so—just so I can almost see your face—

Every mistake, an asteroid that’s already hit, history already mushroomed into one million species

Sixty-six million years after the last great extinction, six to eight business days before the next one, I whispered Speak to a fucking agent into the hold music to trigger the system into connecting me with a “real person.”

Omw, I type, though I’m still huddled in last year’s mistakes.

Online, blondes chirp tips, spin fidgets, get follows. Old story: unequal distribution of grace.

This version: school’s the name for any garden or place that loves Black and brown kids toward their brilliance, grace. In this version: no Zoom judge, no prison for children. No prison for children. No Zoom sentence for Grace.