I'd follow love into extinction

a poem, my breakfast, and Fallingwater

Jun 28, 2024

Greetings, earthlings.

Here are three things that lit me up this week:

1. A poem that knocked the wind out of me: ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I’VE GOT IS A LOVE POEM by Ayisha Siddiqa

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.

Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.

To withstand your own end is difficult.

The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.

Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.

If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.

What if we convince her to stay?

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.

What if we stun existence one more time?

When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin

with her ruptured belly tags along.

Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins
and the violent shape of their drinking water.

The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we
are nobodies.

Been born from so many apocalypses, what’s one more?

Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.

But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over

Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.

I’d follow love into extinction.

I was reminded of this poem via a relisten of Krista Tippet’s On Being interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

2. A thing I ate that made me say “Oh HELL yeah” out loud to no one: my daily eggs on toast, but with basil.

My standard breakfast is a slice of Ezekial sesame toast with mashed avocado and an over-easy egg, topped with Everything but the Bagel seasoning and sriracha.

It’s the time of year when I always have a roots-on bunch of basil on the counter in a jar, so this week I put basil on it.

I recently started saying, “Oh HELL yeah” a lot. I don’t know why. I probably picked it up from a friend–I’m quick to absorb mannerisms from people I spend even a short amount of time with.

Anyway, I spend a lot of time alone these days and I talk to myself a lot, so the first time I put basil on my toast this week I took one bite and let out a hearty, “Oh HELL yeah.”

3. A song I have on repeat: Fallingwater, Maggie Rogers

I was going down my semi-regular celebrity interest piece internet rabbit hole and read an interview with Maggie Rogers where she said that her 2018 performance of Fallingwater on SNL was a personal breakthrough where she realized she could actually sing.

I’m always in pursuit of the moment when I finally feel like I can [insert any single thing that I do] so I watched the performance to see if I could get a visual on that moment, so that I might be able to identify the feeling when it hopefully happens to me one day.

Now I’m hooked on the song. Listening to it feels like going to church.