Suicidal Moths At The End Of The World

By Upama Bhattacharjee

So it goes

that the world ends with a scream.

Several screams—

guttural, groaning—

as we take to the streets like ants.

They say the earth bursts into flames,

purple fire licking up the vestiges

of the wasteland.

Volcanoes bleed red,

burning flesh and green,

and the sky sours to a pale sickly yellow.

On beaches where children once chased waves,

dead whales wash up, rotting—

and hurricanes sweep our houses

like matchboxes.

They tell us to keep it together when the world ends—

the trick is to look death

dead in the eyes.

I wonder what colour my hair will be then,

the clothes I will wear.

Where'd I be when they announce Mayday?

Would I be at office, I wonder,

a perverse thrill at skipping a dreaded meeting?

Or perhaps I'd be at the grocery store, huddled with strangers

by that expensive milk

I had never been able to buy.

Or maybe on the streets,

watching towers collapse,

eyes open wide

even as my hands tighten on the steering wheel,

afraid, still, more of the dark?

They tell us that the end of the world

would be loud.

I hope I put on my favourite record

when it comes, and that I get to listen

to my lover's sigh before it does.

A singular rumble of thunder before everlasting quiet—

ah, quiet—

Somewhere in the back of my mind,

I can already hear it, that definitive

explosion,

the sheer cacophony of humanity

that'd follow,

of fear and resignation and regret.

It's the gurgling ocean of noise

that I sink into

when the sunlight casts spotlights on afternoons too good to be true,

as monsoon bleeds into winter.

I think of death so much

that it's already a memory:

drowning is the quietest,

poison like gasoline in my blood,

the knife dressed as mercy

in the way it relieves the stagnant maroon eating away at my heart.

They had told me the prophecy

on a winter evening,

and I remember my hands trembling

in anticipation,

as my mind picked at the art

of the perfect final curtain.

An open-ended game, with a predetermined conclusion.

A blind fool's chance at Russian roulette.

So I wait for the end:

until then, I take refuge

in the nightmares I welcome back

with open arms.

I taste ash when I dream

of the fire I'd light,

big and angry and terrible,

savour the dizziness when I jump

to my demise over and over.

And every single time,

I smile—

when I shoot the gun myself

before death gets to

pull the trigger.

By Upama Bhattacharjee