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To My Future Selves, From My Future Selves by Kate Castellana

To:

Every night I pray for the ocean;

the animals. I try to enjoy the sunlight

 

but everything is just

different levels of fear. Tell me:

 

is it as bad as we thought it would be?

What could bloom, here? A recurring dream -

 

in the crushing law of the sun, we lose all our soft.

We blister under the weight of our own foolish history.

 

From:

Oh, my love, you feel so old. We know.

We keep and remember the fear. We forgive you for it.

 

We have seen and still see such terrible times.

What feels like the end of everything. But please

 

remember what the deserts used to be, and what they changed into,

now bursting with night flowers and strangeness.

 

What could bloom, still?

Anything. Love. Always.

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Kate Castellana is currently a student of psychology and creative writing in the Pacific Northwest. Originally from Los Angeles, she has been previously published by Blue Marble Review, the Lammergeier Literary Magazine, and Ohio State Lima’s literary journal, Asterism.