What We Talk About When We Talk About The End

It goes in different directions. I try to stay away from the panic.
I think about Juneau. Or islands out there in the middle of the ocean.

I complain about New York City grocery stores and the weather.
We compare the places we have lived. But I don’t want to go back.
I want to go forward. Somewhere new.

This is what this time has been like. It is a vacuum. A non-space.
I don’t live here, no one lives here. Here we just wait.

We talk about selling off all our belongings. Leaving the apartment.
Storing the little that mattered. And walking. South first, then west.

Walking across America to see what there is left to see before the oceans become toxic and the people have all closed up and left for higher ground.

Just walking till we reached another land, another option. A place where the sand
feels like sand and not like the glass it is already trying so hard to be.

Then the cats meow. They curl around my feet and cry in the heat, so full of need.
And I worry we can’t go. We have so little but right now it seems we have taken on too much, the way a ship takes on water.

So then we talk about other things. Bluffing. Poker. We talk about chess and pawns.
Metamorphosis. We talk and talk to fill the hours before we know.

It is the universe, I tell you, telling us to move on. We talk about “better.” We use that word. You nod and sip your drink. We don’t talk about Europe. That part is too hard.

This is what we talk about when we talk about the end.