Adam Jon

When I die I’ll still be reading this poem to you

in this moment
like an orange,
sliced and sweet,
at an unmarked crossing
thirty-two years in the future.

I’ll be in a bad state that night,
but remember how alive I am now:
the anxiety of my breath
against tangled steel,
the tremble of my fingers on this
page and the steering wheel
with a fiery train growing out of my chest.

How similar it all is.

In one thousand years the world shatters anyway.
Started by a cosmic hang-up—
stars forgetting how to live.
The opening and ending flash right now with pyrotechnic
black hole and planetary shard
splaying through the future
and this evening walk
with you.

So, consider me outside of your macroscopic eyes—
freckled-shy at thirteen—
now entwined,
and dead.