APOCALYPSE KALEIDOSCOPE

notes from a suffocated woman

I miss summer mornings, the bees hovering at the screen door,
pressing their velvet faces against the mesh. I think
of my hands rolling dough, the flour dust blowing then
settling like fallout, a mess for my win. Last night
I dreamed of whales singing beneath ice shelves,
their voices older than our first wars, their songs
a blueprint we never learned to read.

Perhaps the cardinals will remember us fondly
how we left feeders swinging in January wind,
black oil sunflower seeds scattered like ash.
Or perhaps they won’t remember at all. Better that way.
The red flash of wing, the mate call at 4 a.m.,
urgent and unapologetic.

My own anxiety feels
small and bitter in my mouth, a pill I can’t swallow.

Behold the moon jellyfish, pulsing without a brain,
no cortisol flooding its translucent body, no algorithm
for dread. It drifts. The water holds it.

I want to be held
like that, thoughtless, salt-born, impossible to drown
in my own thoughts.

But I am drowning. My lungs
are full of numbers: the temperature rising, the debt
accumulating, the wars, the hours until, until what?

All these winters and I’ve just about learned
to love the cold for what it gives: how the ice
preserves, the way snow muffles the sound
of engines, of marching, of the machinery
grinding us down to the lost hum of bees.

There, the bears wake hungry. They shall find
a world thick with salmon and berries, no human scent
on the wind. Here, the cats, feral and sleek
reclaim the cities, birth their kittens in our libraries,
shred the books we wrote about dominion and discovery.

1+1 will mean nothing to their amber eyes.

Yesterday I watched a tiny bird defend her feeder
with such fury I forgot about the news,
the warnings, the scientists with their graphs shaped
like hockey sticks and grief.

She was four inches
of grey rage, and I loved her for it

for caring about something as small as tiny seeds,
for fighting as if the world wasn’t ending.

Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we are just learning
what the dinosaurs learned: that extinction is
another word for making room. The earth will spin
without us counting its rotations, the seas will rise
without our equations.

The birds will sing.
Please, let the birds sing.

Even now, in the coldest winter of my life,
I open the window. I am drowning but I open
the window anyway. The air rushes in
not cold enough, never cold enough
to soothe my brain.

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Thank you for reading my work! Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and dystopias when I’m paying attention.

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I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon.

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I’ve been asked for a T-shirt inspired by the Kaleidoscope so if anyone else wants one, you can find it here:

If you have a great printing service nearby and would rather go there yourself, DM me and I’ll send you the design file free of charge so you can use it privately.