This evening, apocalypse

Irony’s the only solution.

An acceptance of the total polarity of the human experience. The contrasting colors spreading out from the center. The hidden secret in a blue sky that’s only revealed as the sun dips down, swallowed by the edge of all things.

The past and the present.

The present and the future.

The utter collapse of a star into a black hole makes it no less a star.

Look up. The fucking sky’s been falling since the day you were born and yet here you stand, a sentry on the forefront of oblivion. The first, last remaining thing between the beginning and the end of all things.

Undying, and in communion with god.

Yet you waste each breath on the labors of death. On the devil that sits on your shoulder, whispering for you to give in again to the powerlessness that hurts you, that harms you. That eats away at the expanse where your heart lives.

Look down now at the insects, the ants scurrying frantically in the red dirt in search of nothing. No purpose could be more clean than the tireless service of shared survival.

Following endless signals left by restless sisters who walk an endless path toward the same goal.

Whether up or down the end remains clear in the quiet thinker’s perspective.

The goal is to say I walked on the path and illuminated the way.

I opened the sky and laid the spectrum bare so that others might see their way.

And you could follow at any time you chose if you only knew that your meek goals were as lofty as those of the bugs scurrying over your feet.

The ground beneath you shudders and cracks. The sky turns hot like fire, a seering hell that turns your eyes to ash. And blind, you reach out in search of that path you saw. At the end of the world and the end of your life you beg for biblical knowledge. Your last, first hope at survival. Your fear of judgment writ large.

Why wait so long?

Why let your last breath be the one of a saint or a savior?

Why expend the best of yourself on what feels like the worst day?

Reach instead on the days the Earth still turns for you and those around you. Remember to bask in the hidden depths of the collapsing star at the center of your system. Embrace the beginning of new patterns and paths around a finite thing. Touch the warm skin of a being that touches back, to hold on just a moment longer. And then let go again with that same sense of place, of self.

And as the seas rise and the clouds descend, run into the impending night with both arms open.

Rush at the thing you’ve feared all along.

Alone.

Together.

Till the very end.

All of us, like the ants on their path and the clouds in the wind and the planets in their turn and the cosmos in its swirling dark.

Embrace it. All of it. It’s all you have.

It’s all we have.

It’s all over.