Poem: I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth
–Fatimah Asghar

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are mak­ing a come­back, one snug tight
in a pur­ple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite col­or is pur­ple but Prince’s
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuck­le around us; behind
your head a but­ter­fly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole con­ver­sa­tion; by my old apartment

was a but­ter­fly sanc­tu­ary where I would read
& two lit­tle girls would sit next to me; you caught
a but­ter­fly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.