“As it turns out, the Mayans were wrong, and so were the Christians and Catholics and Mormons and Flying Spaghetti worshippers…” he smiled at her, “The world doesn’t end in apocalypse- no body comes back. It just goes…”
She leaned on the door and gave a knowing smile.
“Tomorrow is the rapture-and I wanted to spend tonight with you.”
They blushed. She replied, “That’s very sweet. I’d love to.” She let him inside, amazed her lover of four years could still shake her heart with the simplest sincerities. For the rapture was tomorrow, and everybody knew it. Every previous prediction for an end-all-be-all scenario had proved wrong, but this was a different kind of rapture, not a guess, just a fact of life.
Adele relaxed with Andre’s arm around her on the couch. Her house was lavish and the window before them was tall enough to let in Apollo’s whole chariot. “They’re really sure about the rapture?” she asked.
“It’s gotta be. The scientists have it figured out. They’ve got charts and equations. I mean, it’s gotta be.” He replied.
“You understand the charts and equations?”
“No.” He smiled at her and shifted to rest his head on her lap. “But it’s gotta be.”
“If you say so… Well what would you like to do tonight?”
“Mmm… Scrabble?” They chuckled, “No, maybe just make dinner and watch the sunset? I don’t know if that’s fitting for such an evening.”
“That sounds good to me. And maybe we can even make tine for Scrabble.”
“Great.” he said, closing his eyes.
She looked over him, entrapped in his every beauty, all the little features and embellishments embossed by time; how the face is a canvas. He looked back in her eyes, and the moment was over.
“We should play some records.” He suggested.
“Sure- Oh how about Stevie Wonder?”
“Yes, definitely.” He beamed. She got up and slipped the album onto the Victrola on the other side of the living room. He reached out his hands…
…As around the sun the earth knows she’s revolving…
The four gods pondered in silence. Energy held his chin in his hand, scouring at the universe. Matter’s three heads wavered unbecomingly. “I just don’t know.” Matter said in a questioning crescendo.
“There’s always the option of doing nothing. No answer is an answer.” Void suggested.
Energy shook his head, “I’m not even sure we’re certain what the question is, let alone an answer.”
Life just listened with their head down.
“Let’s go over what we know.” Matter said. “Yesterday, everything was going like it always does… spinning and existing… and that was fine. And then today… well it’s still going on like it does, but tomorrow it seems like it’s all going to… Stop?”
Energy shot a glance to Void, “Do we know it’s going to stop?”
“Well,” it said, “Not exactly…”
Silence again, like Dvorak twiddling his pen at the new world with an unbearable case of writer’s block. Matter finally spoke again. “Well, Life, you’ve been quiet, what do you think?”
…Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea, always…
Entropy guided Andre’s body to stillness, and Adele let go of the look holding their orbit. Witty and silly tidbits ran though Andre’s head, like his mind was burning up on re-entry, but he elected to say nothing. He walked to the kitchen and stopped.
“Should we make that pink lemonade?”
“Oh- yeah. Sure, it’s in the top cupboard.”
He mixed the drinks. She turned down the music and joined him.
As he pressed the pink lemons, he was also brewing a melancholia in his teacup skull. The spark that lit his fire had arose independently of the universe- as thoughts tend to- and now the simmering kettle was beginning to steam. It was not an uncommon drink- the flavor? Bittersweet of course, infused with the essence of roses, baby’s breath, and unpublished poetry.
Adele leaned on his shoulder. “Everything alright?”
He lifted the mouth of the kettle to let the steam out from the rolling boil. “Yeah.” Silence seemed to miss the cue and hung around, letting the music dominate the air again.
Until the day that is the day that are no more, always…
“You sure?”
He finally took his unflattering brew off the fire. “Yeah, why?”
“You just stopped dancing kind of abruptly. And you look like you’re a thousand miles away.”
“Oh. Yeah, I was. Just, thinking about the rapture and someone I forgot to write a letter to. But I am good.” He turned and gave himself back to her. “We should sit in the sun room.” He smiled and she mirrored his brilliance.
“Of course.”
Energy was pacing in circles. “ We have to decide, whether or not we have to make a decision!”
Void straightened it’s back. “That sounds to me like you’ve already made a decision.”
“What?” Energy replied.
“If we have to make a decision, making a decision is the decision you’ve made!”
“No no no no!” Energy flared up, “I really can’t believe you’re doing this right now.”
Matter interjected, “Please, can we listen to Life for once!”
“Life is just a product of us- they could never understand.”
Life reached up with their solemn eyes, “Am I a product of you, or would you never exist if I hadn’t been there to name you?”
Void threw back his head, “Here we go again.”
Life continued, “You are all blind and act without regard. We should not fear tomorrow, for what is every dusk but a rapture of sorts?”
Energy stopped, “So is it going to happen?”
“It’s gotta be.”
If to Andre, her house was a paradise of contentment, then the sunroom was the fertile valley of contemplation. A softening twilight slept on the English ivy and spider plants about the room. The two were resting on the little couch, simply existing in each other’s embrace. For them, to lie beside one anothergave acloseness and understanding, as if by invisible wires. Though even intangible lines can be crossed.
Adele asked, “When’s it going to happen?”
“Tonight I guess.” He replied.
“Will we know when it happens?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t change it anyway so I guess it’s not worth worrying about.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what it’s going to feel like.”
“But I’m here. And the plants and the sunset and everything. It’s more than enough for me. It’s all I could ever want.”
She couldn’t let the crawling anxiety out of her mind. “Andre…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think I’m ready yet.”
He kissed her forehead. “Don’t fear the last breath of the day. I love you.” For a moment the universe was suspended.
“I love you too.”
The anticipation of the unanswerable questions died with the sun, and like old piano strings the tension was loosening. They lied there for a long time- eventually she wanted to go inside. But it was like having to wake up the cat when it’s sleeping so nice on your lap and covering its eyes from the sun with its paw. But they really did ought to get up now. With few words they moved to the bedroom, where the night had painted a blue monochrome. As they fell through the vapor-wall of inconstant death, all she could think of was bodies preserved in the ash of volcanoes, lovers forever trapped in their last moments.
And so it happened. The stars grieved the night’s departure and all the world ended. Just as Autumn comes always before you’re finished with the summer, and all time gives way with ease, so it was.
That’s when the next morning came. Up from the hollows, misty hollows, where he was living in silence. Wind swept the fog away and the light was dull as a groan over the hollows. Misty hollows, where he lived in a grace unknown to her. She sparked the final ember in him when dawn with her rose red fingers came. And when it was the only light left, he could persevere, like Ra rising from the underworld in his sun-boat. And so that morning was, as every morning was, when one will remember a feeling for the rest of their lives. No night too shallow to bury the ember; no mist to dense too smother completely the hollow, misty hollows, where he lived in contentment, a grace unknown to her.
“Adele. Wake up.” He whispered
She rolled over to face him and opened one eye. “Oh. Oh my god.”
They were speechless, enraptured in each other. It’s a strange feeling of joy when one expects to have little time, and suddenly finds they have more. If only we could see that every day is like that. Life may be a product of Matter, Energy, and Void, but it was an accidental consequence, not a guarantee, as they are quick to point out. How joyous we would it be if everyday we could awake and find that our time, having not yet expired, has cometo us again as a gift.
When in love, that is the world I live in,
Why shouldn’t I be there all the time,
Where Eos is my patron savior,
Tomorrow is the rapture,
Radiant Helios, it’s gotta be,
But tonight I will sleep with a smile.
– Written in the Spring of 2021
everything & nothing 