XXII. The World

three centuries before the 21st ancestors give me their future
by Trynne Delaney

in 1783 those who didn’t follow the north star,
sipped gourds of peaty water and from ships re
membered ocean’s cracking of skin
cruelty that   even oceans have lakes for respite
wealth of salt depleted above
concentrated below
deep in this planet’s veins
blood breaks down from ancestors
salt we sprinkle over navy plates
sometimes tinged red*

*I know I have a future because of Polaris

    in the cracks between dreams*

                                            *stars are lakes
                                                  in deep space*

*give me     new moon returned to loving arms
and starlight pricking all over with   silver tongues,
sometimes I believe in     the power of

                                            looking up*

*when I find my eyes watching reflections
splashed through walking to work                       *

          there’s                                 *

      an   elegance in falling between states,       *     *
element of surprise that the yellow and white
   pills are working   to make this supernova burn       *
slower,     futurity without                               *
                      a will for the end,             *

what is that?
                                            *
a kind of dissociative glory?                               *

Trynne Delaney (they/them) is a writer currently based in Tiohtià:ke. Their writing consists mostly of musings about how we got here, where we are, who “we” encompasses, how to care in a violent world, and how to exist in spaces that are hostile to multiplicity. Sometimes there are aliens, experimental poetry, cyborgs, or the simple repetition of the everyday involved. They are of Black Loyalist, African American, and european settler heritage.