The World is About to End
-like the world just skipped a beat.
People crane their necks up from the street. Their spidery fingers, dowsing wands, drifting towards the sky. Streetlight slows, slower now; passing cars brake to a cradling rest, wheels weightless, floating if only for a moment.
All those conversations, smothered by a blanket of wonderfully nauseous panic. Childlike wonder. The last words dibble off the tongue, piling uselessly in a heap on the cracked asphalt.
But my eyes crawl, brushing past a broken horizon of bent palms and pawn shops, dirty neon signs, and weather-worn wanderers.
The sky is beautiful today.
Silver lights, dancing fireflies.
Just a balloon right? Just some balloons, shivering silver balloons.
Shut that girl up, she’s screaming, someone cover her mouth before…
Too heavy for that, balloons go up; these silver orbs are falling. Plummeting like a fishing line, that’s too heavy son, you will never catch fish with a line that heavy. Don’t you know that?
I know what I’m doing, dad! … I didn’t know, but I caught a fish, a beautiful bluegill.
My father was watching too, the sky, he was standing next to me. He felt it too I think.
If you would have seen the sky, what you would give, to see it.
If you could only see it. You wouldn’t smile… but I’d kill to see your face, see what you’d do. What anyone would.
Falling closer now, a single spinning orb. A silver spherical crystal.
Shining, tumbling, spinning lightly, falling from the sky.
Bursts into a million tiny pieces, shining shards scattered on the sidewalk melting as I get closer, fizzling into the ground. The thirsty concrete drinks it dry.
More shattering ornaments, all raining from the sky, breaking all around, coating the ground in a silver powder.
I run back to the hotel, I need to tell them, to warn them. Glass shards kiss my steps along the way, tearing the skin of my soles.
Let’s go, I tell her, tell her the world is ending, let’s go to the balcony.
Now the sound becomes deafening. A torrent of glass ornaments loosen from the ramparts of the heavens. Millions cascading down, falling in heavy sheets of rain, covering the ground, burying the oil stains, the roads, the weeds on the side of the road, burying the cul-de-sac. The crystal rain sends all the vultures and squatters crawling to find shelter.
Leaning forwards, our stomachs pressing against the cool steel of the rail.
I can see the falling sky reflected in her eyes.
I watch the world consumed by glass.
I take her hand, and together, we watch the world end.
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