Apocalypse, Yesterday

by Manuela Amiouny

All I inherit of my mother are her dreams, delivered
cryogenically frozen to my door, yesterday—on the strike
of our twenty-third month without rain.

I want to cry, I think
I should, for the person who taught me disobedience; care work,
but all the rivers are empty and I can’t find the water.

I wonder if the molten heat of July will be enough to
thaw the B-grade glass capsule, so I can peek inside—
Or at least lick the moisture that would pool at the rim.

I wish I remembered the days I wasn’t so
thirsty - - - I place the sleeping dreams on my windowsill,
to scatter dry rainbows on my floors at sun-up and sun-down.

I wish I could cry for the woman who would
split a grapefruit with me in the afternoons,
sprinkled with a spoonful of sugar, juices bursting down our chins.

Instead, come nighttime I trespass on the green golf field next door
that fired her last month for stealing—three drops off a single blade of grass.
I run across the spitting sprinklers, barefoot on the moist lawn.

I taste the wet on my skin and pretend I am
returned to that summer of humidity-so-thick it pooled
on my body, and her gentle cool hands could wipe the sweat
from my brow.

Manuela Amiouny (she/her) is a writer of speculative fiction and poetry with words published in Augur Magazine, Heartlines Spec, Small Wonders, Radon Journal, and others. She currently lives in Montreal, on traditional Kanienʼkehá:ka and Haudenosaunee land, with her cat, Maamoul. She is the Heartlines Spec poetry editor since August 2025. You can find her on Bluesky @manuelaamiouny, Instagram @manureads, or at manuelaamiounyauthor.ca.