To My Future Child

Daniel Boyko, United States

The plane arrives at Reykjavik at 8:32 am. Only
an hour late. You remind me of this, whining

about your boredom at the airport with nothing
to do or see, your iPad on low battery.

It’s the tween in you. I ignore your complaining,
remind you how excited you should feel to be

in a new country. Like a painted turtle finding
a fresh log. When I was fifteen, I came here,

to Iceland, for the first time on a backpacking trip.
Toured a lagoon filled with glaciers on a small boat.

Grabbed a fallen chunk of ice, licked the salt right
off its surface like a Christmas peppermint. It was

the freshest water I’ve ever had. I’ve told you this
a thousand times, but all I want is for you to see

a glacier before they become extinct. To drink
that freshness. I drive us now toward the lagoon

in a Nissan we’re renting from the airport. You sit up
front for the first time in your life, and the whining

slowly disappears like morning fog. You’re lowering
your window, breathing in the cool air like you’ve never

left the city before. Excited, although you try to hide
it, to spot one of those fabled glaciers. The edges

of the lagoon now visible, we step out of the car.
The water is flat, higher than I remember. You realize

before I do that something’s wrong. Nothing floats
in the water. Not even a fragment of ice. The boats

on the shore are no longer there. You point to
something at the edge of the water touching

the rim of the sky. The last glacier stands tall,
like the last remaining sailor of a wrecked ship

or the first victim to go next.

Daniel Boyko is a writer from New Jersey. His work appears in Teen Ink, Blue Marble Review, The Daphne Review, and Navigating the Maze, among others. He serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Polyphony Lit. Wherever his dog is, he can’t be far behind.