We will learn the names
of the land, of the plants
that were & the plants that remain

Hand-counting blades
of grass until our tongues
go numb chanting the sequence

Music will be conducted by birdsong;
extra credit if you can identify
their new migratory patterns

Our Art teacher is the still-life
of a prairie dawn across the fields,
a fresh chiaroscuro each morning

And at night we’ll break open fires
with chemistry, try to find other
planets flickering to us in the darkness

Audrey T. Carroll (she/they) is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), The Gaia Hypothesis (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Genrepunk Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Instagram/Bluesky.