Chloe N. Clark: This Will All Be Dead
Bioluminescence means you make your own light
There are only a few places to swim in waves
who wake themselves into shining
with the dark
It's much more common in the deepest
parts of the ocean, places where light fails
But we have to plan a trip just to see it
I used to dream of submarines
though I've never told you that
how I imagined a life of sinking
with purpose
You used to tell me your dreams more
often, but I also, to be fair, never
told you how much I love
to hear people
tell me their dreams
About the waves, it's raining
when we get there, but
we wait out the storm
You're the only one I wait
out storms for
When the rain stops,
there are no stars in the black
but the lights come out, shimmer
under our fingertips
You say:
this will all be dead in ten years
But you don’t mean this isn’t
worth it now
You mean this is so beautiful all the time
it has to mean something
Like the time you saw a man
catch a baby thrown from the window
of a burning building
The man looking surprised, as he held the baby
up, their voices both letting out a cry at the same
time so it sounded like one note of so, so
alive
Chloe N. Clark is the author of The Science of Unvanishing Objects and Your Strange Fortune. Her poetry and fiction appears in Booth, Glass, Little Fiction, and more. She is Co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph and can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes.