I was sleeping while you were apocalypsing

With enough sad music, I can accomplish anything. Can even stay up three minutes past ten. With six minutes of Bowie singing "Wild Is the Wind," my eyes are open into late next century . . .

I have already forgotten the future: roaming creatures with new inventions of purpose, handmade and accidental technologies. I believe we loved then, you with your seal and I with my vacuum. Yes, it is coming back to me: we exchanged information then. We laughed at the differences in our codes. In the end we coupled around our similar digits.

Something has happened to the moon. A big finger has pressed it closer. In our last minutes I am grateful that the Deus has chosen the West's night for this end. The earth below grumbles, but the moon is a deep-textured bulb half-covered by horizon.

I thought I would jump and wrap my arms around the queen of tides, but I press my face into the sand and inhale deeply. With each breath I sink deeper. The cranky old rocks beneath me are angry, but earth's liquid inferno will out. An upward-falling spew burns my cheek, already half-fossilized.

I am not alone in the sand. And in truth it is a dark-haired crab that reminds me of

a Coke and a bike and a shop with crooked lintels
three blue little books nestled in a cardboard box
poppy seeds and strawberries
lesbians and sailors
a long-lit day and neither moon nor stars
sitting and rolling
arguments about stained-glass windows
secrets in basements and bright yellow grease
ceramic figures with their hands reaching upward
five in a car
french fries at the end of a long journey
celibacy and the book at the end of the day
ah, friends in the attic