Animals: “Be Safe, Honey” by Dhwanee Goyal
Be Safe, Honey
The mosquitoes have started unshelling, and
no one knows where to run now— the streets
full of old skins, dying days before their time
to go. If there was any red visible, everyone
would probably call this bloodshed. The men
on TV all sound the same, and no one knows
whether they’re kidding or not. “Outbreak on
42nd Avenue. All ambulances and personal
vehicles to steer clear. Based on observations,
the locusts are about to start shedding soon,
too,” they say over and over again. People are
starting to make jokes about how this is going
to be the start of a new world, so many species
extinct. I wonder what the insects think of this
phenomenon, if they think that this is another
plague, or an opportunity at rebirth. I wonder
if they are all still burrowed in their nests,
wherever they might be. If they have
motivational speakers, they’re probably being
lectured on how to hold it together in these
troubling times and some other existential stuff.
I want to say, be safe. It’ll all be over soon.
About Dhwanee Goyal
Dhwanee Goyal is sixteen and getting through life one donut at a time. An editor-in-chief of Indigo Literary Journal, her work appears or is forthcoming in Variant Literature, Heavy Feather Review, The Shore Poetry, and more. Her Twitter handle is @pparallell, and her micro-chapbook, ‘Kasauli Daydreams,’ is out from Ghost City Press.