After Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's "Buying A House Ahead of the Apocalypse.” Thank you to

When the U.N. Climate Report comes out in 2018, the really scary one that predicts food shortages and widespread wildfires as soon as 2040, I’m in New York to spend the weekend with a man I barely know. We’re in a cab on the FDR scrolling our phones when I say, off-handedly, this is why I’m not sure if I want children. What kind of world will we be giving them? He looks startled by my comment. It’s apparent he wants children. And probably not with me. That’s fine. I can’t envision a future, with him, with children, with anyone. I only see him twice more after that.

When I have a drink a year later with a different man, the one who will become my husband, I ask him if he wants children. Yes, he says, decisively. I tell him I could be happy either way, though inside, I feel my ambivalence evaporating. I can see a future with this beautiful man with laugh lines around his eyes, who seems nervous to be sitting so close to me after months of sporadic texting, under the guise of sharing outrage about the rise of separation of parents and children, the early warning signs of fascism. Our knees brush under the bar. I tell him I want to kiss him. I have never been so bold. But he still has a girlfriend, so I don’t. But I know that I will.