Day four. Imagine the world is ending in 24 hours. Write the way it will end and how you would fill the hours.

This one is tough because in my mind, the quintessential last day on earth scenario was encapsulated in Last Night, directed by Don McKellar. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything and could have written something similar, since that movie was made in 1998. I had such a 90’s crush on Don McKellar and Callum Keith Rennie. Still do.  It’s also tough, because I wrote a thing for a prompt at the end of July documenting this exact thing. It read like this

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My last day. How would I spend it? I’d love to say it would be filled with friends and laughter, music and food but that’s folly.
I seek the solace of solitude when I’m hale and hearty, I can only imagine the last day would be more of the same. I might stay up the night before, writing you a letter. This is what it would say.

I love you so much. Your smile filled a crack in my heart and I will forever be grateful for that gift.

As the sky grew light, I would make a cup of tea, earl grey double bergamot, with almond milk and some brown sugar. I would eat a bowl of strawberries because they’re the most sincere of all the fruits and taste best when eaten while holding the leaves and stem.
And then I would paddle out into the dawn to catch the morning break.

I wouldn’t come back because I’m already home.

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But maybe I can try again.
I feel like the end belongs to Jim Morrison. However I feel about him and it’s shifted from either pendulum swing over the years, he reminds me of someone who saw the tenuousness of the veils between worlds. There are a few artists who seem to walk that line, who tap into the either a little bit more than is usual. I have moments I think, but my muse feels more like an ernest hemingway inspired bull in a whisky store. She has something to say, right fucking now! And I’d better sit down and not move while she lets it out. It’s the lie back and think of england school of writing. It’s why I post things in fits and starts and why I’m nervous about this writing every day thing. Will it become diluted with consistency? Even now, my body is telling me I should go back for more dinner, that my half full cup of tea needs a top up, that I should….be anywhere else. The other day when I couldn’t make myself sit still long enough to study for an exam, I finally, out of desperation, literally tied my ankles to the chair. Check that out.

I literally tied my ankles to a chair because it was the only way I would sit still for longer than 5 minutes. It worked, I sat there for 1.5 hours, studying and passed my test with 87% (four that I got wrong I had changed at the last minute, my original answers being the right ones. Second guess myself much? Yeah, too much.) That was the only way I could get my body and brain on the same I just need to sit here please stop distracting me with all of the things place.
What the fuck’s with that? Whatever works though.

Right! Channeling a muse that will lead me to the end of the world.

Does it matter how it will end?
We know that it will.
We know this like we know that 24 hours makes one day.
That’s what is left.
Would you sleep?
Would you cry?
Would you find the one who makes you feel alive and kiss them goodbye?
Would you think about the things you haven’t done, the things you’ll never do and mourn the loss of possibility?
Or will you laugh at the dawn, find reasons to get out of bed and embrace the feeling
of time
passing
in real time.

Has there ever been a time as real as this?
Were there any minutes before now when we held ourselves as accountable as we do this second?

Will I find a way to delight in the cascade of moments as they slip from me like skins I’ve shed to find truth?
Will the woman who faces the end of this day be any more than the one who started it?
Of course.

With every moment I am more than I was.
I arc towards cohesiveness, a cumulative effect of mindful meandering
and reflections of things that mean the most.

I’ll carry you with me
all the way to the end of it.
You made impressions on me
dirty fingerprints on a heart
transparent
with wanting to be full.

How would I spend the last day?
Given the choice, I would paddle out at break of day.
Salty toes drifting light with the weight of her depth below.
The sound of the waves lapping to remind me of rhythm, intrinsic.
The sea brings me home.