will be dead quiet. Gone the refrigerator motors, 

                     bus engines, and ringtones. 

Ceiling fans and fluorescent bulbs will cease to hum. 

You’ll think you’ve gone deaf.         Stay calm. 

Listen for birds, fire, footfall. In the distance 

you’ll hear someone singing. The future

will be full of people singing somewhere 

out of frame. Go and congregate among plastic bags 

and cellphone towers. In buildings already gutted 

for copper wire       where objects of comfort

—sofas, soup bowls, ergonomic office chairs— 

will shut your eyes with wonder.         Grow gaunt.

Regret the time you wasted being hungry, 

regret you were ever withholding. 

Your whole body is going to ache like a tooth. 

You’ll forget words like contrail and teleprompter. 

Toil and investment             will feel new. 

You’ll be stingy with the word desire 

and wasteful with what you call need. Don’t panic. 

This time is the gift of your undoing. Use it 

to explore those things you once used to distract yourself. 

Remember how you used to look at photographs,
your eyes searching for your own face first. 

And if you weren’t in it, remember how the photo 

couldn’t mean anything at all.         In time, 

two of you will find each other in a dim and dusty room. 

You’ll recognize him by the salty slope of his neck. 

He’ll choose you                 for your oval nail beds. 

This you will think of as longing. And when he tells you 

the work we are doing is good work, you won’t be able
to stop yourself. Inevitably you’ll say be inside me.

Because love           will still make you stupid. 

Though its brutality will be more apparent. 

Though the luxury of the word will shame you.

Though you’ll pronounce it biological imperative.