Apocalypse Later

My latest piece to be rejected from a literary journal, so I’ll publish it here.

Her exhale vaporizes in frigid air, a cloudy breath disappearing into the gaseous, blue-fire brood of midnight’s shimmering universe. Inside her: a thick, soft, living blanket, drowning out the thundering heartbeats, zipped tight, sealed securely in snug elastic, while remaining vibrations pass wordlessly between them. A harmonious collapse, an energetic purr, binding syncopated souls.

They stare aimlessly past the empty beyond, and she is fairly uncertain that they are safe here below the toxic chemtrails and echoing acid beams tripping through prisms of the fifth dimension. His large green eyes blink without motion, lazy and untroubled despite their impending doom, perhaps preparing a yawn. She feels inside her body the agony of celestial movement, telepathically assuring him of a survival she is certain is impossible, willing alive through the bandha growling down her throat, growing into a belly fire energetic enough to absorb the eruption of a falling star, or perhaps reignite a fading notch in the Little Dipper and revive the universe, barreling through the frozen force field of light-years, soaring to the center of possibility, imagination. Instead, the sky disappears, all, slipping through utter darkness into the void, eviscerating the existence of eternity on the other side. Distrusting a profound faith that they will remain, tottering on the edge of nothing in each other’s arms. At least for one moment after.

After it passes.

She looks again into his eyes. She gave him everything and asked for nothing in return. One moment of now was enough to expand her heart beyond humanity, in its perfectly finite inadequacy. He wanted everything but to give, ignorant of this cruelty. What did he give her? Warmth. More than any feline could. She lets him out of her jacket to dash after an unsuspecting mouse near the coals of a dying campfire.