to the Future
By: Lili Raynaud
Year: 2024
Download This WorkThis piece was published to literary magazine Brio, in their Fall 2024, Bildungsroman Issue.
There’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.
There’s a great big clock in Union Square 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.
It’s getting the guy at the party to make you another drink
because you like the way his arms look when he pours.
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. 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 hole.
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.