NUCLEAR WINTER

 It’s like when you wake up, on a Saturday,

with a distinct green feeling hovering above you like a poltergeist,

and you know all of a sudden that things are getting worse–

like being hit with a torrent of prophetic potential

except doomsday has already been and gone twice over now.

It’s like putting your palms to your eyes and pushing down

in a way that makes optometrists everywhere hate you.

With your new vision you can see a billion different shining lifetimes

and in each one there is the last ever songbird

singing the last ever dawn chorus

It’s a pack of long-extinct wolves, emerging out of the darkened bush with hackles raised, 

and you have cried wolf one too many times at this point.

It’s the faux fur coat of                                     ultimate earthly desires

burning into an iridescent puddle of                             actual damnation.

Sometimes it is too much to bear. Sometimes my friends are so beautiful,

and love doesn’t come in at the eye, at least not any more.

It stretches out sideways, it swells and bulges everywhere,

it spills out of me at every turn–

everyone is a tiny boat being pulled along by the deluge.

Loretta Riach is an artist, student, and enviro-goth, based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Their poetry can be found in Starling Magazine, or on their website.