Last Fig

A kid outside shouts
“There’s no tomorrow!”
and, I think, he’s right.
And, I think, how must
it feel to be this kid, ten
and skating a paved alley,
bright sunshine in April,
and feel not joy but dread.
The world is burning.
But I have just eaten a fig
that tastes of your mouth
and tastes of my desire
for your mouth, so if
he’s onto something,
and there is no tomorrow,
let me fall into the rubble
with this last wash of your
sweetness on my tongue,
let my desire be the blade
of sprouting green
that cracks the wreckage,
let all the world that comes
after sing out for you.

Jennifer Browne (she/her) falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. Her poems have recently appeared in One Sentence Poems, Right Hand Pointing, Quarto, Trailer Park Quarterly, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and the tiny wren anthology All Poems are Ghosts.