14
... COMES AROUND
Extinction Buffet
too little too late
Chimedum Ohaegbu
Kaila Johnson
We feasted our way into this mess and by God we’ll feast our way out.
metal straws clinking against ice cubes that sink in cheap coffee swirling inside the reusable cup you bought from Amazon
Here — we’ll sit by the fireplace (all places count as such now) and slake our smoky throats: drink deeply the tempests in teapots lest they thrash lands unprepared, unrepentant. Saltwater-crusted teeth are a small price to stay our course — we’re all Atlantis-averse here, chalice-sippers. With the right lies we can make darlings of anything so some of us sacrifice by falling in love. Nowhere’s safer for butterflies than the stomach, nowadays, and it mightn’t be so bad — being a home. We’ll make room for bees as well, atonement via appetite for collapsing them all. We can’t deny the thrill of rescuing honey. Consumption’s what doomed us, yes, but surely this new insatiability will save the creatures we’ve deemed deserving. Of course, let’s be practical. The mouth works in two directions: we must remember too to sing our children lullabies, lend them just laws that keep us fed.
Illustration by Ysabel Gana
why were turtles the last straw?
