The Apocalypse

I don’t want to break up, because when we’re driving in the car, and you’re screaming to your favorite song from a video game that I’ve never heard of, it makes me wish that the entire world was dead; full of zombies, rid of any other beating heart, so that way it could just be you and me for the rest of however long we’ll be existing. When we’re cooking in the kitchen, and you grab me by the waist, initiating a dance, it melts my heart into some kind of indescribable, warm feeling that pours over my skin like rain drenching me in a storm. When we begin to sway to the slow music, I love to close my eyes, and hear you. Hear you singing in my ear. Hear you breathe. Hear your pulse. I’d die to make sure that that sound never stops. At night, just before I fall asleep, I think about the way you kiss me in the glow of the oven light, the smell of garlic, the taste of wine on your lips. It’s slow and deep, and everything I’ll ever need. Even when I finally fall, it’s what I dream of.

I don’t want to break up because I love it when you laugh your real laugh. There’s the laugh when you’re being a nuisance, and you know it. There’s the one that makes you lose your breath after watching a stupid video on the internet. The one that’s more like a screech because I’m trying to tickle you when I know you don’t like it. But my favorite is the one that no one else gets to hear but me. It sounds like the music that will play when I get to heaven one day. The best part about it though, is the smile that comes hand in hand. A matched set. A golden boy with a golden laugh and a golden smile. It bubbles up, and you throw your head back, and then the sound escapes into the air, floating up and up, until it settles on the giddy feeling in my chest. You smile, and I’m staring at you, but you don’t know that it’s because I fall in love with you all over again when you laugh like that. Like you’ve never known hurt, or hatred, or defeat. I know sometimes your glow slips away from you. You feel like you’re made of rock instead of jewels. So, you hide. You run away to some cave far in your mind that no one is allowed to follow you to. I’ve tried, but it’s never ended well. It’s like you’re the last man on Earth trying not to feel lonely. It’s impossible for you. In these times, I don’t want to break up because that’s not what you deserve. You deserve someone who wants to be there for you when you’re not there for yourself. Even if you don’t want me. Someone who will wait outside your door when you won’t answer the bell. Someone who will fold the laundry when you don’t have the energy. Even if it’s hard for me. Even if it’s not fair for me. Even if I’m exhausted too. Someone who absolutely wants to take care of you. I want to be her, if you’ll let me. When things are like this— hard, like this, tough, like this— I go back to those moments in the car. Sometimes the scene is set in dusty, dreary Omaha. The sky is a pale grey, there isn’t a mountain in sight, and my eyes sting, but you’re singing. You’re singing along to your own music, and it’s more like yelling, but it’s winning the lottery for me. At other times, when I’m homesick, the daydream is full of humidity and we’re on our way to our favorite beach. If we were the last people on the planet, this daydream is the one I’d want to make our reality. The beach is where I’d want to end it all with you. We could wake up every morning to the sun bleeding pink clouds across the surface of the Pacific Ocean. We could jump in. We could let the water wash us in its mouth and then spit us out as brand new people; refreshed, replenished, and reborn. I pray that I am reborn with you in every lifetime. After, with our hair wet and strangled to noodle shapes, we could cook breakfast. It will be so savory, and our kisses will add sweetness. I could lie on the sand with a Stephen King book, and you could dive, dive, dive, and offer me a pile of sea shells in your hand that I would cherish like diamonds. Sweet salt would be tangled in our lips when we kiss, and I’ll gladly put the novel down.

I don’t want to break up because I don’t want to forget your face. Your somewhat curly hair falls in your eyes, and you always push it away, but I always pull it back, because I think it makes you look mature. It makes you look grown up from eighteen. Your eyes hold my focus, and I’m cursed until the day I die. When they’re glazed over, I want to clear them a path. When they’re sparkling, it makes me shine too. When they’re silly, I giggle. When they’re gone, I don’t dare to look into anyone else’s. I know no one else’s will be the same. As my memory traces down the bridge of your nose to the tip, all the way to your lips, I have to pause. This is where the heart palpitations start. The first time we kissed, I held my breath for the entirety of it. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to move in fear of creating even a crevice of space between us. So, for two seconds, three seconds, a thousand years, I didn’t breathe. I don’t think I’ve taken a breath since.

I like to hold you under your arms, by the backs of your shoulders. It feels like silk on my bare skin, hot and sweet, melting me into you, so I can’t tell where you begin and where I end. I like to breathe you in, but it’s never close enough. It’s the only thing though, that quiets my rushed thoughts. Since time is always moving, I never feel like I have enough. But you’re the one thing that shuts it up and makes it explode at the same time. I don’t want to break up, because you’re it for me. Nothing has mattered since the day I started to love you. It’s melodramatic, but that doesn’t make it unreal. I am so in love with you, and sometimes, maybe more than once or twice a day, I wish we were the only two people ever. That way, I wouldn’t have to share you, not just with anyone, but with any thing. No work, no bills, nothing in the way, no distance. It’s selfish. On days when the space between us is extra heavy, I walk through the city, and despise the crowds. The random people walking on the sidewalk, the ones in their cars on their way to work, and the ones framed in office building windows. They’re all in the way of my ultimate plan to be with you forever because the truth is, my apocalypse would be if everyone else in the world existed except for you.