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# The World is Burning
- URL: https://www.fsm.ink/the-world-is-burning/
- Published: 2026-06-29T16:00:41.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-29T16:00:41.000Z
- Author: Isabel Dorn
- Tags: Poetry, #Import 2026-08-03 09:59

*by Isabel Dorn*

the world is burning  
and in the middle of it, I am a girl who has never known love  
clinging to traces of tenderness in this temporary home  
we call Earth  
holding the fleeting future of humanity in my ardent grip  
standing my ground at the edge of annihilation  
but longing to step off the precipice  
and fall into your steady, work-worn hands  
and lock myself in your brown-eyed gaze  
and press my cheek against your relentless heart  
and dream that it might beat in time with mine  
  
but if I told you, you’d say the world is burning  
and that love is for fools in a world at war  
and I know too well  
that the only touch you’ll bestow on me  
is your hand on my shoulder steering me back into battle  
and the only place we’ll lie side by side  
is the grindstone where we toil  
facedown and silent till death.  
  
so I turn my cheek from all thoughts of you  
and with aching arms I haul up bucket after bucket,  
drawing fresh water from a bottomless stone well  
to breathe life back into this barren soil  
and fight for a land where hope might grow anew.

> Isabel Dorn (she/her) is a graduate student who uses poetry to examine the complexities of intersectionality and coming of age in the 21st century. As a Vietnamese American woman, she sees writing as a powerful tool for social justice and strives to create more visibility for underrepresented groups with her work.