symptoms of this apocalypse

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
-- Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

A dry center where the weeping was, the numb that follows panic. People laughing in theaters at the tenderest and most terrifying moments of films, my throat a glove turned inside out, heart the pit of a stone fruit set down in desert clay. When I thought about my death it was always old age, a cancer, or the planet turning on us in a final crushing storm or wave. Now I think, bullet to the chest. Work camp. Baton to the head at the protest or vigil. Every suffering I’ve known has had another side I could invent or see take shape within my lifetime. I’ve believed we could heal before it was too late, I’ve said the pendulum swings but always swings back our way. I’ve known the arc of history as long but in my brutal, insulated ignorance never considered just how sharp, how low slung the blade, how deep, how devastating the cut. How quickly, how completely we could be unmade.

•

I will not be unmade. Say it with me: we will not be unmade. A president is neither a god nor a king, and not one among those gets the benefit of my despair. Not one of those gets to splinter us body from body, atom from atom, kindness from kindness, kin from chosen kin. We did not trudge this far along bloody footpaths to lay down in the dirt and surrender in advance. So I’m going to cry in the bathtub and take up target practice. Meditate on emptiness and photocopy pamphlets. Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate. Dance and nap and announce my pronouns and watch the ungovernable sun slant across this rented room, golden and finite. One day you and I will die. One day even the sun will expire. But until one or the other comes, say it with me: we’ll keep feeding the fire.