I was looking for you in the house. Your reflection gone from the mirrors. Perforated light slicing through the blinds. Silence pressing against me. I called your name and the floorboards creaked back, the faucet dripped its slow reply. Your name dissolved into the thick air, thinner, gone.
The garden path still curved the same. I followed it by habit, past the bench where you used to sit reading in the shade, lost in pages. Years later, near our old house, I sat drinking in the park at our spot. The pit opened again. Stomach dropping. Pacing empty rooms in my mind. The ache flooding back, raw, immediate.
If we act like it isn’t spiraling, does that make it stop? Does the unspoken stay unknown? The question only rose when my friend died decades later, never when reason could still contain it. The world ended on a quiet weekend. No sirens. No collapse. Sky still blue. Clock still ticking. If the rapture came, why was it unrecognizable? Why did no one else feel it?
When I found you again, you smiled and said good morning, then told me to go wash my hands so we could eat. Calm and ordinary, as though nothing had ever ended. And you spoke nothing of the end of the world. Does that mean it never happened?