Voices That Sound Like Mine Pt. 1

voices that sound like mine; 1.27.2020

they’re writing books now about

how we may be witnessing our own

extinction

at the hands of the actions we perform

every day. I’ve been saying that we have been witnessing an historic time in global being where everything that surrounds us is of the utmost critical importance. you could fall in love any minute and at the same time your country’s leader assassinated the leader of a country we’ve never been chummy with. you could sit and stare at the plastic seal on the juice that makes your stomach feel better just sitting in your hand, and you could visualize the pile of all those tiny plastic seals, floating somewhere in formation like a new school of fish. I wonder if the oceans plastic (a gift from us to the seas) will begin to follow the pattern of like-follows-like; will there be new nations of yogurt containers and microbeads, maybe a pile of sunbaked styrofoam as tall as Everest? I know a boy who would understand what all of that has to do with the other and even make valuable contributions with crazy but not impossible hypotheticals for any moment in the future that we land upon.

apparently, my research has been right.

I just found mine without any of their books being published yet.

I was right.

They are right.

They’re writing books about being parents to toddlers while writing novels about the probabilities against humans adapting in the way that is

necessary to survive.

But I am younger. I’ve been in love… but maybe not - and I think I might be falling in love now

but maybe not. I won’t have kids. I can’t - not of my own.

I’m of the age group that would like to remind you that

I didn’t ask to be born.

Look around you, what are we doing here - what are you doing here?

It’s all been seen; done; loved; hurt; left; repeated and now we seem to be in decay.

If it had been up to me, whoever that is - many days I wish I could have just kept drifting rather that become this person. who is she?

I say that with the fresh weight on my chest since seeing the words:

“Kobe Bryant dies in helicopter crash at 41”

this morning at work,

on a ski hill full of people who have crumpled a piece of paper, turned to a waste basket

hopped and flicked they’re wrists above their heads with a casual:

“Kobe!”

extra endorphin kicks for actually making a basket; Kobe.

They’re writing books about the most unbelievable disasters, tragedies, heartaches.

Perhaps they’re all around us, and we’ve been trying not to look.

Didn’t we just almost go to war and wasn’t Australia just on fire?

Wasn’t I just dancing with him under dazzling light shows with

our hands

locked tight. Weren’t you sitting there next to me, looking out at all the lights of the city that has run away

or rather that i ran away from

splayed out in the gridded lines of color outlining streets in every direction.

And you talk less now and I think about that a lot

but i remember, perhaps you’re all around me and I’m just trying not to look.

It’s good and it’s bad.

It’s both/and.

But the people writing the books about being parents are worried that they will have to leave their child to be

the end of the species.

I am young enough to fear instead

the fact that

i may very likely be there too.

They’re writing books about it - but I figured it out too before any of that was ever published.

It’s intuition for my generation to sniff out bullshit.

Their voices sound like mine spare the fact that they labored over this for years to say it

gently enough

to be readable. Truth hurts. I don’t have to read about it to know it is the truth i face.

I wonder what the truth for you and I will be?

I wonder if when I am 41 a headline will expose my unnatural, untimely

departure from whatever bittersweet reality

unfolds on the year 2038.

What will I write my book about, given they already wrote the one hypothesizing

that exact moment to very probably be the beginning of some kind of

end.

So I’ll crumple another grocery list,

fudged sketch,

trash poem;

and toss it in the direction of the black, plastic waste basket

sitting next to the coffee maker

also made of black plastic like just about everything seems to be these days.

I’ll raise my sore shoulders,

raise my eyebrows,

imagine a stadium of fans surrounding me and

flick the paper rock out of my fingers;

arms in the air - again I say:

“Kobe!”

They’re writing books about the end of the human race; I was right.

Kobe.