the end of the world (in twelve parts)

reflections on worlds that were

Lately, it is all punctuated by death. My pen seeps blood and bone marrow where the ink used to be. On my walks, I see flowers and anticipate their wilting, the end of summer when their handsome heads will hang hefty like sadness. The branches of plum trees sag with fruit and I wonder: was it rotten before it hit the ground?

History does not offer comfort, per se, but it does offer fact and some may find repose in that. Worlds have ended for as long as they’ve begun. Suffering is the the thread that binds humanity: a throat shredded by a scream, a cheek dry and salt-streaked, a heart holey with woe. The “end” knows no -isms; we’ve all been there, done that (or will).

There’s plenty of talk of the end of times here, in America. In a place that has played such an active role in the wreckage of so many worlds, it’s both unfathomable and inevitable that it wash ashore. And yet, I woke up this morning, my own small world fully intact. What am I to do with this meteoric privilege of breath?

Below you will find reflections on last words and final breaths, on goodbyes and consequences, on bad luck and worse fate. Snapshots from beings whose worlds, however menial, collapsed under the weight of acts of governments and acts of Gods.

The least I can do is remember.*

*fictional tellings of historical events

act i: unknown

I was small, once. Barely there and tucked neatly within myself, buzzing in the dark. There was no noise, not yet, and the only light I knew was the one that burned inside of me. Peace was all I felt; peace was all there was.

Then, something slammed into me, fast and acute. There was light! More! And there was color! And there was pain in the merging, an unfamiliar burning as I stretched, expanded, beyond the boundaries of myself. Countless pinpricks of fire, each our own world, ingested each other until we became I, billions of times over.

act ii: pompeii, italy, late august, 79 CE

Ash swallowed the city first, and me second.

But before that, there was wine, and Augustus’ smile as he drank it. Droplets stuck to his lips like dew on a vine, and I watched as he licked them away between laughs. He’d just returned from the bath and was sitting at the table, having worked up an appetite from doing nothing at all. Bronze curls tumbled over his shoulders, soft and plenty, and I wondered for the hundredth time what they would feel like between my calloused fingertips.

“More,” he bellowed. I sprinted from the kitchen to refill his chalice, the ruby liquid splashing across the sleeve of my tunic.

Just then, the earth trembled, sending plates of cherries and apricots tumbling across the stone floor. Augustus met my eyes for the first time, ever, his beryl irises tinted with worry. As the ground shook a second time, he extended his arms, almost involuntarily, and I leapt for him, enveloping his boyish body with my own. As everything went black, he squeezed me tight as his last hope, and my heart erupted with the ground.

act iii: england, december 1347

Leave quickly, go far and come back slowly.

That’s what the medic had said to me, to us, a full moon ago, just after the cold had arrived. We’d packed what we could and walked in the opposite direction of home, towards nowhere in particular. During the day, we walked — far, as we’d been told — until our feet bled, and at night, we huddled together like rats, as if that would keep them away.

It didn’t.

act iv: tenochtitlan, august 13, 1519

We offered gold and the Gods came with swords anyway.

act v: ireland, late autumn 1847

The last of the beans were shipped away, across the water to men whose pockets weigh more than me. With nothing to pick, nothing to harvest, no way to catch, my stomach has begun devouring itself from the inside out.

act vi: congo free state, august 22, 1888

Something rustles in the tree to my right, clumsy and louder than is safe now. Out of habit, I lift my arm to signal that the others stop moving, and they do. The hot mist kisses the nub of my wrist, where my hand once hung, and I smile, if you can call it that. I could be signaling go, or scatter, or even climb, but they’d understood what I meant, just like they always had. We were connected in that way, not by blood but by the knowing.

Of course, the white men didn’t understand that. Anyone darker than the tree’s bark was the same to them. They’d arrived many, many days before with their boats and tricks, their guns and clothes that clung to their pale limbs like prisons. We could always smell them coming, sometimes before we heard them. Rotted plantain peels and onions and blood, the stench somehow stronger than the rubber we’d been beaten to scrape from the vines.

It had been black-skinned men from the north that’d snatched us from home all those nights ago, but I’d known who’d given the command. It’s them or your woman, he’d probably told him, in some language that I was never meant to comprehend. And so he’d chosen us. If anything, I was envious that I had not been offered the proposition first, before the man from the north. Maybe then my woman would be waiting for me in our kitchen, and not rotting under a growing pile of broken bodies.

After that, I’d stopped trying to meet the quota. They’d kill you if you gave up — I’d seen it happen — and I was giddy at the thought of death. One man with a beard like a bush noticed and yanked me aside, away from the others. (Finally, my time had come!) I closed my eyes and braced my body for the impact of a blow, or a bullet, but neither came. When I opened my eyes my hand was gone, and so was he.

Now, back in the forest, a branch snaps. I inhale deeply and the must singes my nostrils like a flame.

act vii: jaffa, palestine, november 30, 1947

I walked into my classroom, as I did every weekday. Scrawled upon the chalkboard in an unsteady script: “Yesterday, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations decided to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state in it.”

act viii: amazonas, brazil, june 1961

Did no one hear me scream?

act viiii: jonestown, guyana, november 18, 1978

We’d practiced for this. Many a humid night had been spent talking, scheming, planning, dreaming, even, about the finale. Now the juice seems too fake, too sweet, too red. The speaker crackles (or cackles?) — too late for toos.

act x: columbine, colorado, april 20, 1999

(Light wraps me in a fervent embrace; deliberate and familiar. I am almost home.)

Briefly, I am yanked back to earth by a palm in my scalp. My hair snaps from the follicles and blood — my own? — pools warm and wet in the grass beneath me.

“Do you still believe in God?”

act xi: new orleans, la, august 30, 2005

I’d held the bible up for as long as I could, balanced it on my head like a hat from Macy’s, one of the big ones with purple feathers. My god. My, God! I kept it dry as long as I could, I promise.

Maybe if I’d learned to box I could punch a hole through the roof. My daddy was a boxer. Maybe if he’d stuck around he would’ve taught me. Maybe if I’d learned to swim I wouldn’t need to box. Maybe I could float down Canal Street like a trout; breast-stroke down to the corner store for cold drink and a hot sausage.

Next door, a wailing, “Somebody, please!” Or maybe it was just the wind.

act xii: springfield, illinois, july 6, 2024

I’m scared.

Who will finish the soup?