Have some respect

for the frog in the pot.

Frog knows

it is getting warmer.

Frog can taste

the salt, new

in the water.

Frog feels

the change in the steel,

expanding against heat,

and the corresponding streams

of exhalation

bubbling up from below.

Frog knows

it is getting warmer

but

it is dark

in the pot.

To jump is to scald

against the steel bottom,

to lose consciousness

against the sealed top.

Frog knows

it is getting warmer

but

Frog does not know

how to choose

how to die

yet.

Abigail Kirby Conklin is an educator and writer currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of the 2020 chapbook Triage (Duck Lake Books), the Substack "Recently," and a variety of other works that can be found, amongst other places, in the Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Elevation Review, Lampeter Review, and Wild Roof Journal. She exists online at abigailkirbyconklin.us, and via the social media handle @akc_poetry_prints