by Laura Passin

When the world ends, it will not
matter who, exactly, left it early—

the years shaved off the living
heart, the brain cells torqued

and plaqued by damaged genes.
It will not matter

that once the Cuyahoga lit up
like a factory dying, that the water bequeathed

to the Great Lakes by tired glaciers corroded
ships and fish alike. What we leave behind

is massive, minute: a layer of unusual soil
that circles a moment,

a diseased ring in the globe’s bark.
That’s how we figured out

what ate the dinosaurs:
a strange signature, everywhere.

No one will miss us.
We are the comet ourselves.

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Laura Passin is the author of Borrowing Your Body (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and All Sex and No Story (Rabbit Catastrophe Press). She earned her PhD in English Literature at Northwestern and her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Toast, Rolling Stone, Electric Literature, and Best New Poets. Laura lives in Denver with too many pets.