For the apocalypse, we wear ball gowns

My skirt is red, an upturned champagne glass
My body, Barbie proportioned not from vanity, but from hunger

It’s 2100 and we, three sisters, live underwater.
Nuggets of pollution, deceptively iridescent, shimmer through the water
Air tanks cocooned between our legs, obscured by wire-framed skirts.

Destruction is more beautiful than it should be;
The mint-green water splendid with decay

We stay close to the canoe that was our home.
Where our mother seared to death under a stubborn sun.
Where our brother leaked from her body, scorched and stillborn.
Where we watched the earth burn and collapse into indifferent sheets of ash.

We spin in the water, pirouettes of grief.
We will die soon, but first we dance.