The Trees are Senescing, Not Dying. You’re Dying. by Diana Cao
The Trees are Senescing, Not Dying. You're Dying.
Diana CaoHas anyone been here long enough to love it?
Thirty-three years, and some days repeat already.
I come home and the mailbox is full again:new credit cards promise liquidity, deals
I’ll love, do not discard me, hello neighbor,
has anyone been here long enough to love it?On the train, I catch a rectangle of light
that moves like childhood. Branches quake outside
my first home. Even there, the mailbox is full again.The paper says our presidents are so old
their deaths wouldn’t be a tragedy.
Has anyone been here long enough to love it?How do you find the questions before
there are consequences to not answering them?
I come home and the mailbox is full again.Everyone is full of it. I live with the consequences
of not answering them. Has anyone been here long
enough to love it? I come home and
I’m full and I’m full and I’m full.
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This poem appeared in Equatorial Literary Magazine, Issue 9, 2026.
ABOUT DIANA CAO
Diana Cao’s writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Graywolf Labs, The Yale Review, AGNI, and elsewhere. Her debut full-length collection, Slipstream, won the Berkshire Prize at Tupelo Press and is coming August 15, 2026. She is also the author of the chapbook Relational (Sixth Finch, 2024) and the acquisitions editor at Overheard Lit. She was Just Buffalo Literary Center’s 2024 Poetry Fellow, selected by Megan Fernandes, and the winner of the 2025 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest…. (more)
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 30 of The Sealey Challenge 2026—a community challenge to read one book of poetry a day for the month of August, named after Nicole Sealey.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: repetition • disillusionment • aging • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
