Dear Wolfmother,

​

Could you feel the end coming before it did? Was it like electricity—some insouciant  voltage? And if you did, did it make it any easier to endure or did it make it worse?   I wonder.   Because humans, they live the whole of their lives knowing it’s coming – that it’s inevitable - yet how they excel at pretending otherwise. Maybe it’s a necessary evil, this charade? Maybe that’s all this life is in the end—little games we concoct until the timer runs out. Sand sifting through some invisible hourglass.

            I only ask because sometimes I think I feel it coming too: The End. Like voids that swallow themselves, one impinging endlessly into the next.

            And I shrivel and shrink at the sight of it, because I know I am not nearly as brave as you.      My teeth are too brittle. Instincts too dull. I am not fast enough to endure, nor am I strong enough to die with even an ounce of your sacrifice.

           I have never feared death, not since the war, but I fear it now.

             And I can feel the sand tumbling away. Galloping us all, we the pitiful living, toward the cliffs of our impending hour to be swallowed whole by our hate.

                                                                                      -C