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Dreaming of the End of the World
When I close my eyes, I feel the apocalypse creep closer and closer.
The end of the world shifts like frames on a film reel behind my eyelids.
You think it will end in a hail of bombs fired on opposing sides of the world. You imagine leveled buildings, wastelands made out of what were once homes and streets and parks, the silence of a graveyard made from crushed artifacts of daily life once upon a time. You think it will begin in a country halfway around this earth. It won’t come here — that’s what you might believe.
But when I shut my eyes right before sleep I hear the bell tolling on this planet that’s inching towards an end predicted a thousand — no, a million times over. The aliens might have been more merciful, maybe, than the weather or even our own brother humans. But humans love their war games. And they don’t like being told how to play.
Once, I might have told you that I believed in hope. Once, I might have told you I believed in God. But even the fullest churches with the most beautiful voices of a choir cannot lay siege at heaven’s door, fists hammering for any chance to be let in, to be safe, to know a world without sickness or cruelty or death. We believe our prayers ascend to the ears of the Divine — but don’t you think they would have given up on us…
