***
I filled Brisbane
with a bunch of trees.
Just, transported the whole forest
one set of roots at a time.
And I didn’t give into
my baser instincts
and turn them all into people–
nope,
I left them
to grow in the cracked streets
and hollow hallways
of husked-out homes.
Then I went exploring
the rest of the continent,
double-checking
that the calamity
that skinned Brisbane
(was it war? Famine? Just plain old time?)
also gutted
everywhere else
and I made it
an adventure,
I pretended
I was an alien
from outer space
who’d crashed her spaceship
in the ocean
and swam to shore
(and I knew how to swim
because I came from a world with water,
obviously–
I came to this planet
because our telescopes discovered
it had habitable conditions
like our own
and we hoped
to colonize it
for resources
unless the locals
were more powerful,
so I came,
scout brave,
to investigate),
but now
most of my supplies
were lost,
trapped in the ship underwater.
So I had to find a settlement,
stay undercover
and build a phone like I learned in my mission training,
then contact home.
And I’d tell them
I’d assessed the life here
in my sweaty wading through the woods
as vastly inferior,
so when they arrived to meet me
they could conquer this land
easily.
Jordyn Saelor 