When the world ends, it will not matter who, exactly, left it early— the years shaved off the living heart, the brain cells torqued and plaqued by damaged genes. It will not matter that once the Cuyahoga lit up like a factory dying, that the water bequeathed to the Great Lakes by tired glaciers corroded ships and fish alike. What we leave behind is massive, minute: a layer of unusual soil that circles a moment, a diseased ring in the globe’s bark. That’s how we figured out what ate the dinosaurs: a strange signature, everywhere. No one will miss us. We are the comet ourselves.
Laura Passin is the author of Borrowing Your Body (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and All Sex and No Story (Rabbit Catastrophe Press). She earned her PhD in English Literature at Northwestern and her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Toast, Rolling Stone, Electric Literature, and Best New Poets. Laura lives in Denver with too many pets.
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