FALL
2019
KIOSK 61
Mary Mccoy Pathway of Emotional Landscape 1, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Hampton Williams Untitled, 2019
decision
The world ended in the year 2030.
I was thirty-one, married to a towering scientist with kind eyes. We wanted a baby so badly that it seemed the real apocalypse was not outside the walls of our house, but within it. Within my body. How strange, that you could want something so badly that the yearning ache kept you up night after night. How strange that you could want something so badly, and receive it, and regret it.
I carried to term in the last good year. My
making by a. a. khaliq
daughter was born on New Year’s Day. Even as a formless newborn, she had my long, straight nose and her father’s kind eyes. It was stupid, but I prayed that she would have his dimples. It was stupid to pray, to wish, to even hope in those months, but we all did.
We prayed when the government approved a contract with AstroCorp to begin moon colonization. We wished the scientist lottery would favor our partners, that we would live in Colony 0, escape our melting planet. We hoped when AstroCorp announced only scientists could leave on the First Exodus, our family permits for Colony 1 would activate soon. All those sleepless nights with my daughter’s crib to my right and a dustcovered pillowcase to my left--I could almost weep at my stupidity.
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