Chloe N. Clark: This Will All Be Dead

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

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

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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.