For What it's Worth I Left the Earth

[A Dream]

It's a beautiful day in Lower Manhattan. It's warm [must be close to summer]. The sun shines brightly across a clear blue sky. It's like a postcard, I laugh to myself. I would send this to my mom if it would reach her. But it won't. Because today is the last day of the Earth. The crowds and crowds of people wait for the mayor to explain what is going to happen. There are two nuclear bombs under our city, right under our feet. There's nothing we can do. There's another one apparently on the West Coast somewhere, but that's not really my concern right now. The mayor explains that they will only be able to save maybe a few hundred people, in some bunker that governments secretly prepare for people in cases like these. I'm sure he goes on to explain who or how people will go to these bunkers. But I stop listening. Truth is, I don't want to survive the end of the world. The post-apocalyptic grunge and grey and mutated plants and animals and the scorched Earth. How this Thing will happen and what I am looking at will be no more.

I look to Him. He looks at me and says, "What do you want to do?"

"I think we should just enjoy the beautiful day."

He reaches up to caress my face. It's those hands again. My soulmate. I want to know these hands--these big, strong, reassuring hands. I want to know them. Do I know them? Are they already in my waking life and I just can't see? In the lucidity of my dream, my dream self tells my mind that I'll never know.

He pulls me close and kisses me. It is warm, like the sunshine on my face. This is the second time he has been with me in an environment of danger, and I am not scared. I am not worried at all. I am warm and I am happy. I feel like I'm melting into him, disregarding the fact that our skin will literally melt off our bones soon. I wonder if it will feel like this.

The location switches a bit. He is no longer with me. But I'm still not scared. There is a beach all of a sudden, right in the middle of lower Manhattan. The tall buildings loom like cliffs around this perfect stretch of beach. The sand is bright white, almost blinding and I am on it, my pale skin communing with the sun. She is with me. I don't know who she is, someone I've met, someone I may meet, someone I've seen on TV. But she is a comforting presence, and we lie together on the sand with no towels. The sand moves through my fingers. It's a sensation I normally hate, but I imagine knowing any sensation is your last, it is a relief.

Our fingertips are touching as we talk. It's not in a sexual way, more in a sisterly way, as if we could have been braiding each other's hair. Our talk is lazy, subdued, almost drugged in its serenity, given the circumstances. She laughs, "You're so pale!"

I roll onto my side.

"All these years I've been afraid of skin cancer. Should've known."

I look out at the ocean. It is clear and calm and the sand is so white. I wonder if the explosion will be this light. And then I think a horrible thought, What if we aren't close enough to the blast zone? Even worse than dying, What if I survive? And my flesh is charred and I cough pieces of myself onto the pavement?

I look to her, a bit more concerned this time.

"Do you think it will hurt?"

She smiles at me and in a non-patronizing way says, "I don't know. I've never died before."

"I think I have. Just never like this."

Not like this. Will we just vanish? One moment in existence, the next not. And whatever lies beyond, I cannot even predict. If anything at all. And I am consciously deciding that this is where I end. Where I cash in my ticket. I am a bit concerned of the after, but my alternative of after is more well-known and cannot be better than what I have chosen.

"I'm going to move closer to it, I think."

She grasps my hand and says, "Alright."

I move up to the buildings. I am standing right over the bomb. The sunlight reflects off the buildings almost blinding me. Then I realize it's not the sun. This is It. This is the end. That's not sunlight, it is the start of the explosion. It moves closer to me, what seems an eternity but what can only be a fraction of a second. It comes to consume me and He grabs my hand.

I wake up gasping. I do not sleep well the rest of the night.