When I was in seventh grade, my teacher put on our desks a pop quiz and question one was hard, but question five was harder (was the colonization of America inevitable?) and I stared at that question because I couldn't stop thinking about my home in Kashmir and the two militants who stood in our street everyday looking at the kids going to school like we were the ones with guns and a grenade in our left trouser pocket, like we were the ones who killed people for fun and ruined lives because of an order or a religion, and I'm staring at this question because "inevitable" meant their violence was fate and I don't see it written in the stars; the father never returned home save for his corpse but he never returned; no, he didn't, but the guns did and it was a choice, it was, the violence, the pain, it was a choice like the question in front of me and I can't choose because none of the answer choices were as I just explained and my head hurt and my eyes did too because I hadn't got much sleep last night studying for this stupid class and why oh why did I do that because now I was just going to fail this quiz anyway because of this one dumb question about inevitability and it was hard for me to think of anything as inevitable but I guess the extinction of humanity was inevitable, but then again there was a differing definition of humans between homo sapiens themselves where it doesn't mean much, a genocide of brown people, but mugging two white people headlines, so if homo sapiens went extinct I would probably overthink like I'm doing now, and leave this monster of a sentence to help no one and so I glanced around at the kids chewing on their respective pencils shrouded in the pale light of a tube bulb that hung by two partially-rusted chains above the light blue tables and then I looked back at the four bubbles I couldn't fill and thought of my pitifully pretentious professor and wrote everything I wanted to write down anyway because even though it might be circled in red pen and have three red question marks next to it I thought of things that were inevitable like the extinction of humanity and me, and I figured my small push of rebellion didn't mean much but I felt pretty good because that day in fourth period in the humid Texan air I stared down inevitability in four small bubbles and it blinked first.

I go through weeks like I do sheets of paper, or hair ties, or poems. 

I use them all up but I can't remember what I wrote. 

Years are like that too. Someone asks what I did last Monday 

and I stare at them like they're interested 

in my goings-about the first weekend of last January 

which I guess was this January and I still have no idea.

I have a paper calendar purely so I can read it back

to myself on New Year's Eve and recall everything that happened

in the past twelve months, which felt

like twelve hours and twelve days and possibly twelve years

at once and I need to read my twelve-month-old Sharpie

to remember it all.

And the first day of the new year always feels so anticlimactic as well,

like I've been saving up my memory storage for a day

that dawns gray and cold over the horizon of the past one —

familiar and not worth it. So no, 

I don't remember what I did last New Year's,

and don't ask me what classes I went to on Wednesday. This year 

was one week long but it was twelve months and another Monday

is just around the corner. Stupid cyclical nature of the world.

Stupid endlessness. The new year begins on a Thursday, 

the end and beginning

of yet another week in our lives except maybe for Australia,

they've got a head start on remembering it. Take

my picture on January 1st and show it to me 365 sunsets from now.

Ask if I remember what a week this year has been.

The two of them sit on the porch

basking in the sunlight

letting their toes explore the first

frost-bitten mud of spring

Talking about life and death and sex

and little Mika's school play

and how to keep on without much pain

or fear of endings

The younger woman is a seamstress

she shucks corn into a bucket 

and loves God

and is scared 

but knows what is right

The older woman is a scientist

she reads an essay on experimental economics

and is not afraid

but curious

and would never say she knows what is right

not for sure

When the sun gilts their bodies 

just before melting beneath the shadows of the highest branches 

they turn their faces to it

one with gratitude

the other wonder

and together wish their star goodnight

before 

wiping the mud off their feet 

and swinging through the screen door 

to eat with the people they love

Tonight, stars are falling,

Over Chicago, New England, Texas,

From angry east to angry west,

Dark cars: hearses that we don't call hearses

Roll silently towards lively, warm houses,

And as they roll away,

The stars fall away,

And the sky is black

People, bright spots! 

Crowd the streets! Block the hearse! 

Populate the dark earth, so that our reflection in the night sky

Will be twice as bright as any stars ever could be. 

The tides still ebb

The sun still rises

The trees still grow

My curls are longer now.

We have a new president new governors

Different colors speckling made up maps

Division.

I sit with new people

At lunch

Tell new stories

Around the dinner table.

I got a new puffy coat.

But so far, 

The tides still flow

The sun still sets

The trees still wither

My hair stays curly.