worst case scenario

1 Minute Read Time

A small patch of trees surrounded by a vast amount of cut down, dying trees — Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

we die. that’s always the answer. 
if things keep up as they do, I’m going 
to seal the whole world into a jell-o mold, 

I’m going to run down the street throwing ashes. 
my uterus will literally leave my body 
& probably assassinate someone, 

then we will both retreat to the wilderness
as is the way of people. name a new plant
after us. the kind that can survive

in a bubble of amber. when the snow
avalanches you can run away
or swim with the current. it is unlikely your bones

will stay whole but if they do, use them to dig
a cavern out of the ice & you will be unlike
the bodies on Everest left in their coats.

the water here is boiling
into a fine salt. let’s brine
everything around us before it rots.

Sophia Holtz

is a writer and educator, born and raised in NYC. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Writing Fellow, and is an alum of TENT: Creative Writing at the National Yiddish Book Center.

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