So this is when we’re younger, right? When going online is still new-feeling, and all those articles on internet-safety haven’t come out. So, I take

Jessica Young
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this test, online, and it’s supposed to tell me when I’ll die. It says: July 25, 2055. Instantly, I wish I’d never taken the test.

It’s not that I believe in it; I don’t. It’s not that I’m planning around that day. I just start.

thinking of the numbers, and, I, I don’t know. July is the 7th month, 2 +5 = 7. The 25 separated by 05 becomes 2-05-5, 2055. That’s a lot of 5s in there. I don’t know. I mean, those numbers don’t seem accidental.

And I spend years breaking it down, not actively; it’s not in the front of my mind. Not even in the back, really. But somewhere, it’s in there.

The paper that I’ve written the date on, it’s taped to the window over my desk. And it clings with so much damn bravado. This is the house I grew up in. It’s frayed over the years, the house, yeah, but I mean the paper. And the color

from starch white to almond. The corners are pulling in, curling into them- selves. And what do you do with something like that? I don’t

know what to do with it. I’m just waiting.

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Jessica Young’s Pushcart-nominated work has appeared most recently in Copper Nickel, Versal, and Cold Moutain Review. She held the Zell Fellowship for poetry in Ann Arbor, MI after completing her MFA (poetry) at the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwoods and the 2010 Moveen Residency. Her undergraduate work was at MIT.