Laela Russell

Art by: Laela Russell

020 20 My father grabs a pencil and scrawls out the date on the back of an old envelope. I sip my hot chocolate and watch the dying fire flicker. He draws a zero in front of the year and tells me, We are not at the end of a two thousand and twenty year journey but at the beginning of a ninety-nine thousand year one. We are still so very young. Days later my teacher crosses out the extra zero on my home work, taking it for a mistake, and goes on to teach about how we are slowly cooking our planet alive. I bite my fin- gernails and watch the other kids blow sweet vapor thr- ough slanted golden sunli- ght on our commute ho- me. We are still so very young. -River Allen