That one time I had a dream about the world ending and got really lonely for like a week.
The world ended on a Tuesday.
The world ended on a Tuesday 2.55pm.
Black ash filled the skies and the lungs of children. You were stuck on the other side of the city and I
had spent all day grabbing the ashen shoulders of everyone I passed, hoping that when they turned around, it’d be your eyes facing mine. I always thought Tuesday was the most useless day of the week, but now I see the universe was saving it for something big.
Soldiers rallied everyone into whichever buildings were appropriate. Schools, hospitals, stations, libraries. I studied every face hopelessly trying to fool myself into thinking that their eyes, nose,
mouth, lips and cheeks could be yours but there were so many people pressing on top of me and
they are all wrong.
I had started suffocating under the weight of my alone-ness long before we actually started running out of air.
People never quite gave up looking for their loved ones, unless they showed up in makeshift bodybags.
Even as the population dwindled daily, no dead or dirty face even half resembled yours so I sat and calculated the chances of maybe bumping into you, hopelessly multiplying figures against each other, only to end up dividing them again and again to realise I’m still stuck with the same 0.012% chance of ever finding you, and a 0.002% chance of finding you alive in this godforsaken city Those numbers never grew higher, like the number of fatalities or the number of times I tore up the paper thinking
if the facts didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be true and physically demolished the fact that I was helplessly alone. Just like the 67 other people here with me, That you would appear in my arms.
It was always your face I saw in the backs of my eyelids when I closed my eyes and it stayed there
when I opened them only to be smothered in black. This was about the same time my lungs
breathed in black and my heart stopped beating.
I knew the apocalypse was never meant to be convenient, or merciful, but I hope to god, the next
time it happens, you’re not so far away.
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