WHY HAVE CHILDREN WHEN THE WORLD IS ENDING by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Killer whales have stopped reproducing. 
Polar bears are eating their cubs. 

Koalas abandon their young. Breathless,
nose low to the brush to keep

from choking on rising smoke,
they run towards the thousands,

pounds of food we airdropped
where earth stopped burning or

flames just hadn’t reached yet,
guilt for our part in this end

or fear it would come for us
the same. We tell ourselves

everything just wants to survive.

Believe in life as circle, not line.
In Karma, if it means our endurance.

We spread stories about wombats
herding animals into their burrows,

kangaroos hugging their rescuers,
or foxes feeding baby bears

uncharred, canidae milk. But animals
know to rely on no one. Their own

scathed hides and carcasses pile
the roadsides along bus routes

to the local preschool. The children
we chose to have must fight

gagging at the smell. My infant 
daughter screams at us 

for plunging the bulb syringe
deep into her nostril. 

She exhales snot mixed 
with my milk, screams

again, then sleeps. 
She doesn’t know

we’ve made this quiet 
possible. She turns her head away 

where breathing comes easiest 
and reaches for a warm body 

as soon as she can smell it close.
She doesn’t know the coral reefs

are dead and sargassum reeks
in mounds along Caribbean coastline,

starfish suffocated under its spreading. 
And maybe this is why

we’ve made her. Because 
she doesn’t know survival

is in our hands, forgives us 
their indiscretions, and lets us 

hold her body as though 
it were a world 

we could still save.