the end

iklimya

the world is ending
as if endings mean anything anymore.
as if we haven’t already died once or twice
or five hundred times on public transit,
or in waiting rooms,
or beside people who kept living like it didn’t hurt to do so.
but the kid next door is learning the violin.
sounds like god being strangled through the walls.
i sit perfectly still and listen to it.
because it’s ugly, and real,
and because the sound of trying is more sacred than any hymn.

art is resistance.
it’s rot made holy.
it’s blood that refuses to dry.
and i hope we keep creating.
keep planting gardens in the lifeboats.
keep kissing like the sun won’t explode.
keep singing like our throats aren’t full of smoke.
i want to believe it means something
when a child draws the sun yellow
even though she’s only ever seen it grey.

I hope we write manifestos in our journals with broken pens.
sing lullabies to dogs
film god in strangers’ faces.
pour glitter into the cracks just to say look, it’s still here.
i want a revolution.
i want a girl to paint her own face
and walk into a room like it’s a cathedral.
i want the world to spit its teeth out
and keep smiling.
creation is a fight, it’s a bruise that sings back.
it’s chewing glass because you miss the taste of light.
because someone somewhere
just tied ribbons to their bike handles like it’s still 1999,
like their mother’s still alive,
like the air isn’t thick with sirens and silence.
so the earth is collapsing.
and i hope someone’s painting it as it goes.
not to stop it,
but because something should remember us beautiful.

iklimya is a creative writer who is currently majoring in English Language and Literature in Turkey. She is a senior and mostly writes about grief, childhood or more specifically girlhood and religious trauma.