When the World Ends, I Want to Be By Your Side
A Prose Poem
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Stars blaze in their swan songs, and we’re lost in each other — anything, anything, to escape the truth of a world gone wrong.
Your smile is a bonfire in the dark, dark night. We try to tell ourselves we don’t care that there’s no guarantee of a tomorrow or an ever-after — but the cracks show when we least expect. It’s the way your eyes glaze over a little bit when you see a mother leading along a little girl. It’s the way my throat closes when I wonder if there will be food left in the cupboards a week from now.
But one thing I know is true, love: I would rather see the end of the world with you than live a lifetime without you.
The moon hides behind floods of smog and dust, and we’re taking our time, slow-dancing in a little cabin that’s our last hideaway.
We look at each other instead of looking anywhere around us — all the better to pretend we’re living in safer times where a future gleamed on the horizon. I tell you my secrets one by one, the things that would otherwise die with me, and you listen as if I’m spinning tales of grand adventures from worlds far away. You speak your truths, every single one, while I thrum notes on a battered old guitar.
I can’t promise you a happy ending, but know this, my love: if this world’s a goner, then at least I’ll see that last sunset with you.
The comets come and go, sunlight bleeds over everything and scorches the earth — yet we’re happy, so happy, for this moment captured in a glass.
We say all the words we want to share — no filter, not now, maybe never-after — and there are no longer clocks for us to gauge our time for superficial means. Work, play, it’s all or nothing now, doesn’t matter as long as we make it through another day. There’s all the time or there’s nothing — who cares, we all made our beds and now we have to live with the consequences.
Love, I won’t say goodbye, so kiss me when the world blinks out of being — a moment’s chance, one last refrain for this love song we crafted together.
