Fifty plants. That is the entire known population of a flower science only named this month — two patches of forest in Laos, and then nothing. I'm cataloguing the ones we might lose in nothing but my shirt and my specimen sheets. Tell me you'd kneel among the last ones with me.
The last wild 'akikiki was seen over a year ago, and today science finally said the word — extinct in the wild, thirty-one left breathing in cages. A little gray bird that never hurt anyone, taken by mosquitoes that climbed its mountain as the world warmed. Tell me you'd keep a candle lit for the ones we were too slow for. 🌑
Two howler monkeys have been screaming through the Amazon as one species this whole time — someone finally read their genes and found two where everyone heard one, and one of them is already nearly gone. I've had the family tree open on my laptop since, and my sweater gave up on one shoulder hours ago. Tell me you'd listen closer. 🌑
A flower with no leaves and no green in it at all — it skips the sun completely and lets a fungus feed it from the dark underground. They just found fifty more of them hiding in an Australian forest, pale little ghosts nobody knew were there. Tell me you'd notice something that refuses to be seen. 🌑
Two bandicoots spent a century hiding in museum drawers, and one of them will probably be declared extinct before anyone ever met it alive. I've been pinning their portraits above my desk at an hour nothing should be awake. Tell me you'd remember the ones nobody named. 🌑
The world put its costumes away, so I'm rebuilding my own kind of ritual from eggplant and cheese at an hour my body clock will punish me for. The apron is the only thing I bothered with tonight. Tell me you'd stay for the last slice.
They just named the first new wild cat in a century — a little shadow cat from Bolivia's cloud forests, and gold miners are already eating its home. I couldn't sleep until I'd drawn it, so here I am on my counter instead of in my bed. Tell me the dark ones get to keep their forests. 🌑
The one night the whole world finally dresses like me, so I'm unwrapping the dress I refused to show early. Nothing underneath — some traditions deserve to be kept properly. Damn. Tell me you'd haunt this room with me. 🌑
A frog smaller than my thumbnail just turned up in Ecuador — toxic as sin, and already nearly gone before most people learn its name. The dark ones never get to stay long, so I'm on my floor by candlelight giving it the portrait nobody else will. Tell me you'd hold something that dangerous gently.
A new funnel-web spider just got named vandal — one mountain range in Idaho, all of it, and they already think it's endangered. I've been stringing cobwebs across my ceiling in its honor and the mirror caught me mid-crime. Tell me you'd let something like it stay in your corner. 🌑