letter to the Future
By: Lili Raynaud
Year: 2023
Download This WorkThere’s only a limited number of times you can look at a tree. No matter how big the number is, I don’t think it’ll ever be enough.
The crate of oranges we get at Christmastime is not as good as it used to be. Some years it’s frostbite. Others it’s the hurricane. I miss the sweetness of that forgone fruit.
They say it’s going to be a wet and humid winter. They say the cold seeps into your bones.
There’s a great big clock in Union Square that is counting down the years until the point of no return. There’s no return in my lifetime. These days it’s hard to picture the future.
I’ll try.
Dear Future, I try.
Mostly I try not to think about you.
The world is ending, it’s always ending.
This is what it’s like to be young in a world that is ending.
It’s craving watermelon in the dead of winter.
It’s tying the blindfold with your own two hands
& forgetting about the clock for a night
It’s getting the guy at the party to make you another drink
because you like the way his arms look when he pours.
I want to grow old. I don’t know if I’ll ever grow old.
At night I look up at the great big clock in Union Square. The seconds keep running out. Each minute is like a bag of rice with a hole at the bottom. I look away. Maybe if I look away the time will stop running out. Maybe if I get on my hands and knees I’ll be able to mend the the hole.
When you’re young in a world that is ending you’re still young.
& so I forget. And I feel guilty for forgetting. It says 5 YRS but it has already started.
It’s not about us but it’s all about us. If a tree falls in the woods, it still makes a sound even if no one is around to hear it. Poetry doesn’t mean a damn thing if no one is around to read it.
The world is what we make of it.
& maybe the world is better off without us. Maybe we ought to be expelled like a mean cold, coughed and sweated out.
Dear Future, I hope you understand why I don’t want to believe this.