Thank you all for joining me on the journey of creating Poems for the End of the World. The manuscript is still a working document, but I am pleased to report that it has a publisher. I’ll keep you up to date with the release once I know more  <3.

I hope the poems have been good for you as we move through this season together, and I’ll be back with more poetry soon.

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Introductions in Green

1. I am going to die. Obviously.

So are you. We don’t know

when. Or who will go first.

I’d better tell you everything I think

I know or remember while I am still

alive.

2. These are my hieroglyphs.

I hope you can use them. Some of them

are recipes. Some of them are prescriptions.

3. Most are only moments

I still have questions about

or stones I wanted to squeeze

before I skipped them

into a deep lake.

4. Probably, this is the lake.

And the stones. And my hands.

The ripples on the surface of the water

as the stones skitter across.

The fish. The flies. Mosquitos.

If there are ducks, this is them too.

5. Maybe in the future, you won’t know

what a duck is. Maybe I should learn

to draw a bird that flies and floats and

stretches its long neck into water while

its body is perfectly still atop its depths.

6. Sometimes, when the sun hits just right,

the green in their feathers looks like emeralds

or spray painted metal, a treasure.

It almost doesn’t look real.

7. A treasure.

8. Do you believe the wild and

precious imagination of God? I hope

you imagine something beautiful

for God in return.

9. You are precious, you know?

You are alive for now.

I do not know if this will still be true

when you read this, but so am I.

10. So many of our beloveds

have not survived.

Still: we are here,

brave enough to have

beloveds.

11. Sometimes I close

like a fist and that, too,

is love.

12. I exist. Therefore, I deserve to be loved.

13. I am learning to stop

apologizing for declaring my own

deservedness for love.

14. Everything alive needs love.

Even the things with thorns.

Even the thorns.

Even the blood dripping

from fingertips into the soil.
Yes, even the finger.

Yes, even the soil.

The worms, dancing in the dark of it.