In Light of All Things

The sun rises somewhere in the distance, and light pours like milk on the horizon. The air hangs listless and viscid, and the stillness bores its way to the edges of my chest. It's not a silence that resounds as some moment of tranquillity but a hush that lays heavy with dread. Nothing should ever be so quiet. I don't know why I am telling you this; if you did find a way out, you know this as well as I do. No birds on the breeze, no leaves in the wind, no faint chatter or promise of life as yet unfound. To exist without interruption in the vacuum that remains of the world.

Before all this, I think I'd romanticised the idea of the end as some kind of redemptive abstraction. I'd hoped for some grand adventure or cataclysmic finality but found only the loneliness of a gradual decline. The echo of smoke and tar still stings the air, and I count myself lucky for the last drops in the bottle at my side. Most of the water has turned acrid, and the land around it has grown caustic. In truth, I consider this a small mercy. It seems better that there be none than too little to go around. I have seen the ugliness that survival mandates, and there is nothing poetic nor profound in such desperation. Easy for me to say with my bottle, I suppose.

It's a long while since I've seen anyone, and I half hope I am here alone at the end of things. Better than to burden anyone with the hope they were here with me. I have searched for you without trace or trail and have long since abandoned the delusion you were waiting for me. All that remains is the locket, and I can't imagine you would leave without it. I run the heart-shaped metal through my fingers, unable to part with the last echo of you. Better that you be gone than rambling through the husk of the world for me. I wouldn't wish such an emptiness on anyone. The world spins as though it stopped, and I can't say with any certainty if it's been days or weeks. The presumption of time seems silly in a world without clocks.

I think the very nature of hope forces us to believe in a certain innate goodness, some unifying virtue as the essence of our being. I can tell you with absolute certainty it doesn't endure as a universal. Having seen the best and worst of people, I'd argue very little exists as an inherent facet of being. Whether a luxury of fate or circumstance, some weathered more intact than others. At the start, I found many people wandering in the expanse, but over time these numbers have whittled. I searched every face for yours, asking anyone not struck silent for some trace of your name. There is something empty about continuing for continuation's sake, and those hollowed by grief were not any more functional than those incapacitated by rage.

I think if I found some trace of you, some sign that you were truly gone, it might be some small comfort. The idea of you waiting here at the end of the world for me is more than I can bear. In these moments, it's the simplest things I miss. The ringing chime of your laugh or the salt on the ocean breeze. Nothing grand nor gaudy, just the humble of the everyday. A few quiet moments canonised in the entirety of existing with you.

I leave this in the wish that no one reads it and much less that you ever find it. In these last days, I want you to know I loved you every bit as much at the end as at the beginning. It turns out the end of the world is the same as the end of any life, defined as much by who we loved as who we were. If you do find this, I hope it is from the light of a better day. I hope that there were others like me and that from all this emptiness and loss, something bright can bloom from the ashes. The spirit endures for the very sake of endurance in a hope that might yet spring eternal.

I leave you with the simple faith that the sun will rise again tomorrow, even now at the end of all things.