Together

Poetry

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

together

yellow skies, and the orca whales
are teaching their young to attack ships.
most animal rescue videos
are staged supplications
to a currency of clicks,
and the sharks die off screen
once the cameras stop rolling.

adapt and survive, there are worms
that thrive inside the thermal vents
of the Marianas trench,
but our lungs may never
subsist on sulfur and ash,
hearts blackened with tar
like Mordor babies

teething on bones thin as sticks.
that hiss in the trees
is now an absence of leaves
drifted through with detritus,
where everything is on fire,
and the evacuation sirens
have long been silent.

unopened soda cans exploding
in the rubble in the heat,
and everyone is homeless now,
a unity at long last discovered,
too late too late,
the meaning of the word survive
the same as that of another:

together.