The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

by Franny Choi

By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we finally stopped hearing it.

The good news is that things will go back to the way they were, which is also the bad news.

As a child, I couldn’t believe my luck: born in the best country on Earth. Now I know better. So what.

Try not to time travel, says the voice in my meditation app, as I fast-forward to everything I haven’t yet remembered to be afraid of—

everyone / you know / someday / will die will was / will used to / will had been what knew / would have / forgotten were to / have known / were to have been / lived

I sit on the train toward Chicago and mourn the avocado softening in my kitchen. This, too, is practice, avocado being the smallest unit of grief. It’s rock and ripe and gone; rock and ripe and gone. Which should be a lesson.

They’ll say: What was it like to have so many people on Earth at once? They won’t say that, but I’ll answer anyway: It was very busy. There was always something to avoid.

I want to tether my friends to the rooftop railing the way we once pinned a blanket to the beach with shoes, books, bags of carrots, wine in a can. How we flexed and curled our toes until we found the damper sand, the soft homes of crabs below. But the wind won’t stop coming.

Filling the kettle, you catch me humming, The dream that you dream will come true, and we laugh, though nothing’s funny but this: We knew the end was coming here. We knew it, and like idiots—like perfect idiots—we stayed.