Skiff
in my dream, the earth is an hourglass
and we are five stories from submergence;
rather, five months, five weeks, five days--
i watch boats dispatch from our neighbors’
balconies below, carrying cardboard boxes of
whatever they could carry and hoping they would
pass as waterproof. i ask my mother when it would be
our turn and she tells me soon, my daughter, soon.
we don’t have a boat, i say. she smiles sadly.
in the kitchen i help my father assemble a paper skiff.
i hope it holds up, he tells me. every day, up creeps
the acidifying sea, rising like nature’s bile.
of the skiffs i watched deploy, i wonder--
how many are made of paper, made of postcards,
shopping lists and holiday letters, photographs and
checkbooks, crinkled diplomas, waterlogged dreams.
i can’t believe, when i wake up, that
the world is still drowning
and we are five stories from submergence;
rather, five months, five weeks, five days--
i watch boats dispatch from our neighbors’
balconies below, carrying cardboard boxes of
whatever they could carry and hoping they would
pass as waterproof. i ask my mother when it would be
our turn and she tells me soon, my daughter, soon.
we don’t have a boat, i say. she smiles sadly.
in the kitchen i help my father assemble a paper skiff.
i hope it holds up, he tells me. every day, up creeps
the acidifying sea, rising like nature’s bile.
of the skiffs i watched deploy, i wonder--
how many are made of paper, made of postcards,
shopping lists and holiday letters, photographs and
checkbooks, crinkled diplomas, waterlogged dreams.
i can’t believe, when i wake up, that
the world is still drowning
"2050"
In thirty years
my mother’s birth town will sink
like Atlantis: foretold by the
prophecies except
not a myth. That’s not what I told her.
Even after graphic design screams activism
on my Instagram feed. Even after storms
inundate news overseas. In a language I can only
listen to, my parents stream live footage of
a flood. Once, my uncle got a photo from
family I don’t know, and laughed
at a house half-underwater
as if it were not a house but a country.
It is 2020, early enough to be funny. Early enough
to tell my parents that it
will be okay.
I told my dad while driving the other day.
Then I told him that They could fix it
and prayed that they would.
my mother’s birth town will sink
like Atlantis: foretold by the
prophecies except
not a myth. That’s not what I told her.
Even after graphic design screams activism
on my Instagram feed. Even after storms
inundate news overseas. In a language I can only
listen to, my parents stream live footage of
a flood. Once, my uncle got a photo from
family I don’t know, and laughed
at a house half-underwater
as if it were not a house but a country.
It is 2020, early enough to be funny. Early enough
to tell my parents that it
will be okay.
I told my dad while driving the other day.
Then I told him that They could fix it
and prayed that they would.
Caroline Dinh is a Vietnamese American writer and artist. She is the founder of Backslash Lit and has work forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Flash Point SF, and Honey Literary. She has strong feelings about the color cyan. Visit her online at https://cyborg48.github.io/.