Dear Meeka,

They say we have 12 years left until the end of the world,

Which means I only have 12 years to get to know you.

That must be so much shorter for me than you

And shorter still to our parents before us.

When you’re twelve it’s a lifetime

When you’re twenty-four it’s an investment

And when you’re fifty you can drop twelve years like change out a car window

You check your pockets and you look back and it’s gone and getting further all the while

Like words you can’t unsay.

They say the ice caps are melting and the sea is rising and the world is fire, fire, fire,

Solar flares are catching every oil spill and dollar bill alight,

Our nukes are overheating and there’s a plague of anti-vaccinations,

Our data’s compromised and the robots are Neo-Nazis,

And all of it is spinning faster and faster and faster,

So it’s not a question of IF and MAYBE but WHICH apocalypse will come clawing to the top

To claim the title prize in the end,

And in twelve years the last Tweet standing will be

#CalledIt.

I want to text you a picture of the end of the world.

I want to Tweet the protests and liveblog the collapse,

And I want to Snapchat wildfires with aesthetic filters.

I want to wrap everything terrible in tiny boxes that can’t hurt us.

I want more time.

Here’s the story, baby girl, and listen close and listen fast

because it only gets weirder from here:

Nine years ago there was a boy named David

And a girl who must’ve had a name, too

And they laughed and teased like siblings do

And nine years ago David died

And the joke stopped being funny.

And that girl moved to Seattle so she could stop seeing his face

In every friend of his and everybody knows everybody in Minnesota.

“Oh, her? She’s David’s sister.”

“Except now, I guess.”

“Now she’s nobody at all.”

So she went to Seattle, because there being nobody is not a bad thing to be

Seattleites make art out of pretending not to know each other.

And she heard on the news that there’s 21 years until the end of the world

And she thought, “God, finally.”

Nine years after, her parents called

They’re fostering a girl named Meeka

She’s twelve years old.

“She likes art and writing and Disney movies.”

“And she looks so much like you, Natalie.”

“She’s angry and lost and broken like you.”

And suddenly I want more time.

The end of the world isn’t a bad thing if you’re fifty,

And you drop years like change and racial slurs,

And at the end you can look back and say, “I had a good run.”

When the world ends, I’ll be almost forty,

And I guess that’s not a bad run, either.

But you’ll be twenty-four, Meeka, like a nobody lost in Seattle,

And that’s not enough time.

I want to go to the fair with you and the movies with you,

And trade terrible selfies and recipes,

And be unapologetically vapid, selfish, and human.

I want to tell you it’ll be okay someday,

You’ll find freaks and friends and carve out your own home,

You’ll let yourself hurt and realize what it’s like to heal.

David died but Meeka lived and Natalie lived,

And thirteen lucky years later the second Tweet standing will be

#ButTheyLived.

#ButFirst,TheyLived.

I want to take your hand and smash every robot,

Tear capitalism apart with painted fingernails,

Devour the sun like an angry god,

And make a home in the ruins of nukes and broken data,

Sparks like fireworks in the summer sky.

They say we only have twelve years until the end of the world,

But I don’t believe that.

Because the world ends with us, little sister,

And we’ve still got a long way to go.