The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we finally stopped hearing it.

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.

And whose country was I standing on, the last time we survived?

otherwise, to drift numb and dreaming through the so-called day; Dystopia isn’t there something else besides; there must be; some sequence that ends in anything but a cold loop; there must be