This is an end-of-the-world kind of love.
You know, a grab-onto-something-because-
the whole-place-is-coming-down sort of situation.
When all of the volcanoes erupt at the same time,
and the sun supernovas, you’ll still be hottest.
When the nukes go off in billowing fungi,
we’ll close our eyes and imagine the earth
climbing up a mountain in clouds,
like a Sherpa going to visit his gods.
Even while we huddle in the shopping mall
listening to zombies scratching at the cinderblocks,
I’ll think about how you’re the one I want to die with.
And if you get infected, that’s okay too.
You can corrupt me, and we’ll still have things in common,
pretend we’ve just grown old, developed peculiar tastes,
and don’t get along with our kids anymore—
you’ll complain to withering houseplants
that our children never call us since we tried
to gnaw the arms off their dates.
That’s why they stopped coming around.
Anyway, let’s grab a couple of beers and watch
things blow up on the evening news.
If you’re not busy later, we can look for a cave together,
outfit it with spring-sprouting sofas,
drag a dented dishwasher in front of the opening
so no one will know when we hide in it.
We can live a long time on canned tomatoes,
waiting for all that we’ve saved to run out.
Let’s get buried under the last breath
of the world that no one could survive long in.
Let’s be bothered by endings for the last time.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 3.
Chera Hammons is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College. Her books include Amaranthine Hour (winner of the 2012 Jacar Press Chapbook Award) and Recycled Explosions (Ink Brush Press, 2016). She is a winner of the 2016 Common Good Books Poetry Contest judged by Garrison Keillor. She lives in Amarillo, TX and serves as a member of the editorial team at poetry journal One.
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