In the Wake of World

I saw you. A large duffle bag was slung over your shoulder, your sister’s hand tightly in your own. Your back was turned to me, but I knew it was you. I recognized the tattoo on your forearm you’d gotten after we graduated high school. You had called me after your appointment and showed me the intricate symbol that was now embedded into your flesh. I loved it. I got my first one soon after and you were there, just as you promised. The world was much simpler than before all of the fighting and the chaos. 

The last time I’d seen you was the night before you left for school again almost two years ago now. We held each other close that night, and though you promised it wasn’t the end, deep down we both knew it was. We spent the rest of that night wrapped in each other's arms dreaming of a future we both wanted but knew wouldn’t come. The more we dreamed, everything slowly circled the drain.

For so long I couldn’t accept our ending. It seemed too soon and too wrong. My reality - our reality had collapsed around me, and nothing has felt real since then. We had fit into each other's lives like a missing puzzle piece. It seemed like I had known you all my life and you, me. I refused to believe that it ended, and I still sometimes struggle with it. I stare at the puzzle of our love, looking at all the places you fit in. Now, there are just empty spaces.

“We’re just too different” is what you had said when it ended. I didn’t agree, but I let you go. You wanted an adventure and maybe I was holding you back. I felt selfish sometimes for wanting to be around you so often. I needed you like we need oxygen, and maybe that’s what drove you away. Perhaps our ideas of love were just too different. 

About a month after our end, we met up and exchanged the belongings we had of each others. You asked to shake my hand, as a good terms goodbye, but I refused, unable to meet your eyes. I wanted to throw myself into your arms and never let go, and I knew if I had shaken your hand I would have done just that. After that, I stayed away, just as I promised. 

One by one your puzzle pieces faded away as I remained. I never stopped wanting you. Never stopped wanting what could have been and wanting what I knew I could have with you. But you were meant for other things. Life was yours to take a hold of and command. But my life wasn’t like that, and I couldn’t follow you. My life wasn’t headed in the same direction as yours and I could never hold you back from the life you deserved. So I stayed behind without a fuss, watching you walk down the path you chose until the horizon swallowed you hole.

Not long after I’d seen you last was when the alarms started to sound. I remember wondering where you were and if you and your family were safe as society caved in on itself. Many went mad as the streets became bloodstained. The fighting made the cities crack and crumble. But even when the world went dark, I knew you would be able to hold your own, at least I hoped that you could. 

Perhaps that was another reason I loved you so much. I felt so safe when I was around you. I might not be able to defend myself, but I knew I could count on you. You always told me I would be fine on my own, but neither of us took into account the monsters that would soon be unleashed. We never would have thought that I would be the only one crawling out of the debris that was my home. 

But I saw you here. Your sister had spotted me over the crowd of those who have survived. She smiled at me with a smile that once mirrored yours. I watched as she tried yanking her small hand from your own. You were busy talking to someone and ignored her efforts. I knew she wouldn't be able to escape, your grip on her small hand to strong for her to get out of. Even at that, I know you’d never let her out of your sight with the disheveled state of the world. Eventually, you turned and looked down at her, I assume you got irritated with her nagging. I don’t know what she had said to you, but her small hand rose and pointed at me. You seemed to freeze and slowly your head turned in my direction. Those same brown eyes I remember waking up next to all those summer mornings met mine and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. 

I saw her little hand continue to tug at yours, desperately trying to get you to let her go so she could come over to me but you didn’t seem to notice anymore. I don’t remember if I moved first or you did but suddenly you were standing mere inches in front of me. 

“You’re still alive?” you whispered softly. I knew from your eyes that you were relieved.

Am I alive? I questioned in my head. It felt like a dream. Even the world’s collapse felt like a dream and I’m still waiting to wake up. My house would still be standing, my family would still be breathing. Maybe, just maybe, I’d still have you... Of all the people I could have and have come across I never thought it would be you. Sure, my cruel and wandering mind had curated scenarios where we would find each other again and be reunited. But never had I imagined or thought it would be in this lifetime, especially not after all that had happened. But maybe we didn’t need a “different lifetime,” we just needed a different world.

Maybe I was dead, and this was some morbid version of the afterlife mocking the regrets I had. But I doubted that, I felt that death would be cold and empty. I felt neither. I was hot, feverish even. My heartbeat rapidly sending waves of adrenaline throughout my body. I wanted to run. I didn’t move; I stood like a deer in headlights. I was completely paralyzed by every little feeling and memory flooding back. I feared my voice wouldn’t come if I tried to respond, so I just nodded. Even if I found my voice, what would I say? What is the right thing to say to someone you loved at the end of the world? 

Your eyes searched my face, I don’t know what you were looking for, but you found it regardless. Your face had always held many emotions. Your expressiveness is what drew me in. We had met at the high school’s play practice. I was new to the school and auditioned on a whim. I really didn’t have high hopes, but we both got the leads. Your energy and enthusiasm intimidated me. You always jumped in head first, I sat back and took my time. Our characters had a romantic relationship and I remember trying not to fall for you, but the way you interacted with me outside of rehearsals was like a moth to a flame. I thought I would never have a chance with you but you had asked me out on opening night, and I said yes. We didn’t feel so different then.

But looking at you now – after everything that has happened, I felt my bag slip from my fingers and I lost my sense of everything. It was as if my bag was my lifeline and without it, I was drifting away like plastic in the ocean. But your arms wrapped around my body and I was pulled back to shore. I heard a soft whimper and I don’t know if it came from you or me. I quickly embraced you back. 

All I knew was that after over a year of being in hell, it was nice to be held in a familiar embrace. Your embrace. You felt the same way because you tugged me even closer and hid your face in the crook of my neck. I held back just as tightly. For a moment it was as if the world didn’t end as it did, one scream at a time. No bricks had fallen, and no lives have been lost. It was just you and it was just me. 

We’re just too different echoes in my head, a harsh truth to our story and its end. But maybe that’s what brought us together to begin with, different is what started us off. I was one extreme and you were the other with personalities that braided together evenly. This world was entirely different from the one where we met. Everything was different. But somehow you had stayed the same.