While you were snickering and sniveling,
palms circling together in sinister delight,
as you yelped, Gotcha again, libtard!

While regurgitated lies
slithered through your thumbs
despite autocorrect’s futile attempts
to make grammatical sense of your vitriol,

While you were cyberbullying people for wearing masks
ranting at school board meetings for the meme potential,
fancying yourself an Instagram influencer
mocking and taunting and sucking the air out of the room,

You didn’t even notice
that July was the hottest month
EVER.
EVER!
And next July will be worse yet – guaranteed.
And it will never get better.
NEVER.
NEVER!

Even when November feels like July,
and every last decent person opts out of social media,
and brilliant people,
who paid attention in biology, chemistry, and physics class,
gentle people,
who would give a stranger the shirt off their back,
creative people,
who are capable of crafting solutions no one else imagined,

Even when all of those people,
just close their laptops for good,
switch off their phones,
and stop talking and laughing and planning,
and stop writing and dreaming and hoping,
because they have nothing left to give.
You have wrung them dry of it.

Even when hurricanes rip through city after city
and rising seas flood basements where poor families drown,
and firestorms char trees older than the Pyramids,
and water becomes the new currency.

Even when you,
YOU!
and your family and your neighbors too,
find yourself starving refugees,
with no border to cross,
waking day after day
to relentless heat, chaos, and despair.

Even when your children plead,
Why couldn’t anyone prevent this?
You, who long ago forgot how to speak the truth,
will tell them your last lie.