End of Life Planning

Earth spins like a microwave plate.
Circles the room of the universe like a blunt.

We smoke it without asking whose it is. Outside,
the sky is leaning against the house wearing semi-sheer tights

that barely hide her skin-tag moon.
She doesn’t notice me staring, so I do for a while.

Out of the silence a poem appears like a medical bill.
I don’t remember the name of it,

but it ended with the line, “Death is only good at one thing.”

·

Do you know—are we supposed to spend our lives
coordinating our deaths?

Like picking your seat ahead of a flight, so
you don’t end up sitting across the plane from your partner.

Just in case that’s true, and we do get separated,
let’s plan to meet at the northernmost point of death,

or if there are no cardinal directions, find the idea of ‘constant growth and progress’.
I’ll be sitting there, alone, waiting for you

beneath several screens playing muted reruns of American news,
old recordings of earnings reports, and

loops of delivery videos showing
birth after birth after birth after birth after birth—

until they all seem as meaningless as televised sorrys.

Natalia Prusinska is a Polish-American, queer poet and author of the chapbook, Hard Jolts of Hope (2021). Her work has been featured in Hooligan Magazine, Storm Cellar, High Shelf Press, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner in Los Angeles.