Sometimes I Imagine the World after the Apocalypse

Sometimes I imagine the world after the apocalypse. Maybe you can't even call it a world at that point. All the great highways have crumbled into dust like chalk, the skyscrapers have cratered, the vast fields shorn and stone-hard. 

I see mass graves and no more burial markers. No more newspapers for obituaries, somber halls for eulogies, candles for memories at midnight. 

I see scattered stumbling wanderers, so alone they cannot even fear what Cain did, that someone will kill them, because there are no longer other someones. No more comment sections to share loneliness, no more paper to scribe meaning in it, no more ears to hear your voice. 

I see no green and no small scurrying creatures, no steeples glinting in golden hour for there is no more golden hour. Ash falls from the sky. The end has happened and what do you do after the end? 

I zoom far, far in to this not-world, and I see a grimy once-house. The rock that shattered the windows still lies on the unswept floor. A pile of empty cans lies in a corner, tidy and despairing. There are not even cobwebs for there are no more spiders. There has not been water in the pipes for so long that the dirt collecting in the sink swirls around in a little tornado of choking dry debris. 

In the back of the hovel sits an old woman with very white hair. She is holding the last candle. It lights a little halo around her. And she is holding a book. She looks up at the darkness arrayed against her as if she is a judge in a courtroom, and she reads her verdict. 

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flocks be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls—

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Sometimes I imagine our world. Maybe soon you won't be able to call it a world. All the great highways snake around each other, the skyscrapers waver beneath the weight of our ambitions, the vast fields strain against the day we wear them past the potential for restoration. 

I see mass graves that people call by other names. I see half the world in bed with death and the other half unwilling to whisper of its existence. 

I see the ghostly light of many screens glazing the faces of the hunched, evolution in reverse as man sinks back to beasthood without even realizing it. I see so many words slopping over each other, more and more words to hide that beneath them is nothing. No meaning, no healing, no ability even to state bare facts. 

I see no hands to meet the groping hands, no feet running though they must run, as in a bad dream. And the earth keeps careening. The end is already happening and what do you do in the middle of it?

I zoom far, far in to this not-world, and I see an insignificant apartment in a city umbrellaed by a dark cloud. Weed-smell slicks the air in the halls and shouting falls from above like acid rain. There is a coating of dirt in the stair corners that will survive the apocalypse. On one door hangs an autumn wreath. 

Inside that door sit a circle of people. They have shed their shoes and coats and drink warm apple cider in paper cups. They turn to each other. They laugh often, they cry. Through an open window they can hear people screaming, sirens, distant planes. They read old words and pray old prayers. They fling their frail voices into the night.

The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together— 

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Sometimes I imagine that the earth becomes a star not because it is burning but because there is on it a pinprick of light, from one unimportant apartment, from the back of a hovel, just a pinprick, just as the other stars are to us pinpricks, but as it spins through the ebony universe, you can see it, bright and piercing. 

Sometimes I imagine a great tidal wave of light pouring over the globe as when the sun rises in a sped-up satellite camera, and I imagine it gathering all the little pinpricks together, absorbing them, magnifying them, well done thou good and faithful—and the great seas of darkness, too, it will gather even those and ignite them, what thou intended for evil, I intended for good. 

And all the lonely voices that cried against the night will now be singing and the morning stars shouting together for joy in the second and better dawn: 

—yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places.

—but as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.

Hi friends. I know it’s been a while—October was busy and full of (mostly) lovely life things (birthday celebrations, friends visiting, getting my wisdom teeth removed—hence the mostly) but I’ve missed the routine of weekly writing on here and I’m excited to get back to it. 

I was working on an essay-ish piece but when I sat down this morning to pray this came out so—here you go. October was heavy, too, with the Israel-Palestine conflict stirring up a lot. I suppose this is the result of some of that. Also the minor prophets, man. They’re just the best. 

Verses quoted: Habakkuk 3:17-9 and Micah 7:2-3, 7-8

In Other Words…

Part of wisdom tooth recovery meant finally catching up on my goodreads reviews! And I watched more movies this month, hallelujah. Most were rewatches but I treated myself to seeing Killers of the Flower Moon the weekend it came out which was a great decision.

goodreads (books)

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein (4 stars) | Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (4 stars) |  Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (3 stars)

letterboxd (movies)

Killers of the Flower Moon (5 stars) 

How were your Octobers? What’s easier for you to see right now—the darkness or the pinpricks?

Stay awake. <3

~ Aberdeen