Ruby Solly

Rising

I dream of the future.

There I said it.

This part of my body

leaves me in wisps,

Travels behind my eyes

up through and out

the top of my head:

the last part of my skeleton

to form

after I was earthside,

freezing over

like a lake in winter.

I see the past too.

Men chanting themselves to animals

and back again.

Women throwing themselves into volcanoes

to save themselves from the cold.

But the future it scares me.

Each time I go further and further in

and find more and more water.

Children amphibious,

pale and gilled

swimming around gilded towers

full of recirculating air.

This is not the part that scares me.

It’s the nights where I have no dreams at all.

Well, not no dreams

just dreams of black

existing in endless time.

And maybe this is the big bang

and maybe this is the end

and maybe this is all just a reason

for us to rise faster

than the ocean.