The Future
By Maya Garcia Fisher
The future is covered in aluminum foil
dipped in chocolate and gold
and consumed whole.
The future is getting drunk and
yelling something about how I
am going to live forever off
strangers’ apartment complexes,
is getting high and staring
at the ceiling, again, forever.
The future is plant vines
that have grown so long and thick
they strangle me in my sleep,
not the first or last American woman
killed by something she would die for
and the future is ass tattoos
and lipstick smeared
over teeth and mascara running
down faces
and the flimsy cotton
of cheap dresses paired
with the expensive silk and
organza of lingerie
we cannot afford but buy anyway,
is absolution,
is redemption,
it is here,
is here,
is here.
The future is stops into the city
for the last time this millennium;
the future is erupting into a thousand
tiny little pieces that will
leave cuts on the soles
of our feet; is an exploding
crystal ball above me
as we slow dance.
The future is foreheads and
palms slapped against table tops
when it all becomes too much,
the diagnoses that will only
make everything harder,
and also more sad.
And the future is the internet,
is a million and one
souls who will never see the sun,
and entire days spent in front of the TV
watching shows we can’t stand
and don’t find funny.
The future is finding another job
I know I will hate
and quit in three months, the customers
that make me insane
and funny in the same breath.
The future is finally learning how to spell
the bourgeouis
so we can articulate the very
people who kill us even here, even so.
The future is when I grow up
I want to be something
gorgeous and untouchable.
The future is when I grow up I want
to be anything other than this.
The future is four cups of morir sonando
when I’m sick and
cups three cups of tea that will
tell me if I ever find love.
And the future is
dying alone, but knowing
that in the future, there is always
a loneliness,
a loneliness, so you’d better get
used to it, and the future
is being human
until I can no longer stand it,
until it kills me, and no longer
fearing that return to the gracious unknown
I was before I got here.
The future is my final breaths;
a sacrilegious testament that life
was not a dream, that I was
here, that I lived,
and lived,
and lived after all
how the future is both awful
and glorious at the same time.