The World is Burning

by Isabel Dorn

the world is burning
and in the middle of it, I am a girl who has never known love
clinging to traces of tenderness in this temporary home
we call Earth
holding the fleeting future of humanity in my ardent grip
standing my ground at the edge of annihilation
but longing to step off the precipice
and fall into your steady, work-worn hands
and lock myself in your brown-eyed gaze
and press my cheek against your relentless heart
and dream that it might beat in time with mine

but if I told you, you’d say the world is burning
and that love is for fools in a world at war
and I know too well
that the only touch you’ll bestow on me
is your hand on my shoulder steering me back into battle
and the only place we’ll lie side by side
is the grindstone where we toil
facedown and silent till death.

so I turn my cheek from all thoughts of you
and with aching arms I haul up bucket after bucket,
drawing fresh water from a bottomless stone well
to breathe life back into this barren soil
and fight for a land where hope might grow anew.

Isabel Dorn (she/her) is a graduate student who uses poetry to examine the complexities of intersectionality and coming of age in the 21st century. As a Vietnamese American woman, she sees writing as a powerful tool for social justice and strives to create more visibility for underrepresented groups with her work.