fortnite 1
by Chloe Clark
On screen you can be revived
if you make it to your partner
if you can avoid an enemy
there’s a cleverness to this
how your partner must leave
themselves unprotected
to revive you, how you
must hope they do that
I once spent a night
in an ER waiting to hear
a surgery went fine
and time felt like it does in dreams
drawn out in the wrong spots
sped up in places that don’t
need to be focused on
you don’t have to walk
down hallways in dreams
if you don’t want to
I think I told you that once
but I wasn’t sure you were listening
On screen it’s easy to lose
it happens so fast
that you couldn’t see it coming
so you can’t blame yourself
you just slowly move
towards your friend
slowly let the clock spool
out, wonder what it’s like
to be saved
if you make it to your partner
if you can avoid an enemy
there’s a cleverness to this
how your partner must leave
themselves unprotected
to revive you, how you
must hope they do that
I once spent a night
in an ER waiting to hear
a surgery went fine
and time felt like it does in dreams
drawn out in the wrong spots
sped up in places that don’t
need to be focused on
you don’t have to walk
down hallways in dreams
if you don’t want to
I think I told you that once
but I wasn’t sure you were listening
On screen it’s easy to lose
it happens so fast
that you couldn’t see it coming
so you can’t blame yourself
you just slowly move
towards your friend
slowly let the clock spool
out, wonder what it’s like
to be saved
Chloe N. Clark holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment. She teaches multimodal composition, communication, and creative writing. Her poetry and fiction has appeared such places as Apex, Bombay Gin, Drunken Boat, Gamut, Hobart, Uncanny, and more. She writes columns for Nerds of a Feather, and can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes. Her chapbook The Science of Unvanishing Objects is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is also founding co-editor-in-chief of Cotton Xenomorph.
