The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor.

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.

What crown? If I’m king of anything, it’s being late. Omw, I type, though I’m still huddled in last year’s mistakes.

Dystopia of houseless people and boarded-up houses on the same city block;

Dystopia fill out this form if you get raped;

If the land in me could speak to the land I live on, what would it say?

I was never any good at telling the difference between what wanted me and what wanted me gone.

Someday we’ll lie in dirt. With mouths and mushrooms, the earth will accept our apology.

I have invasive dreams, after all, they infect my lover’s skull,

If not even my memories love me enough to stay, then fine, cut off the hands that keep me married to any history.

Sometimes I wonder how long I’d have to run to reach the last generation where one of us felt loved,

If I love anyone enough to know they deserve better than me, and stay anyway, then: What?

Look: paradise is both a particle and a wave. You don’t have to believe in something for it to startle you awake.

I look at your face and there, I feel it—my life rushing toward me from both directions, twin rivers reversed

us, laughing at the same time with both our heads on the same pink pillow, improbable—in the same city—both our hearts still going—What are the chances, I murmur when I reach out and touch your brow, How is this possible—