There Is No Fixing This: Chapter 2

Before the End I

Disbelief runs rampant. Blood from a reopened wound. A wound that never had a chance to heal properly.

Start. Stop. Start, again.

The stream runs constant, a blanket built of ideas. An endless current of answers with no base to questions that had always been shouted at a wall. Questions as intimations, questions built on ideas. Ideas that crash, unceasing waves on a forgotten shore. Comfort erodes. Replaced by…what?

Start. Stop. Start, again.

Fear. Shame. Denial and grief. The straws that were pure illusion but grasped for all the same. Resources all but used up even before, a wasteland of fossils, the hill on which we die.

Time proved fruitless and wearying.

Denial in the face of the unavoidable. Escalation and screaming. Quickening the end constantly avoided. Mommy and Daddy cried. Hugging away the constant reminders. News created daily glimpses into man’s existential weakness. We watched, powerless.

Start. Stop. Start, again.

Maybe this is the answer? Maybe that will save us. We are at the top. We built the platform, and we cannot fall. If we fall, where will we go? Humanity was built and lauded for bending this planet to its will. What lies do we believe to make this ok?

Start. Stop. Start, again.

The men cannot make babies and want everyone to know that it is not their fault. They let everyone know with bullets and bombs. Retaliatory and crying gasps at power. Same story, different face.

Quickening. Churning. Blanket the skies with horrors untold. Litter the ground with the remnants of disbelief. If there is no hope for tomorrow, let’s make sure we never reach it.

Start. Stop. Start, again.

Scrounge what you can. The planet is dying. The people are dying. Faceless gods laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Criminal. Saint. Chips down, carving out the struggle.

Start. Stop. Start, again.

And through it all, we drown. Gasping for the final taste of what was, the bittersweet illusion of eternity, the non-existence of inevitable oblivion. The waves crash and the rock breaks.

Start. Stop.

Whatever light there was left so swift as to cause question of its ever having existed.

Start. Stop.

Push. Pull.

Together.