The World is Consumed by Fire

The world is consumed by fire just before I wake. I spend the morning holding back tears, holding back a dread, which, if let in, would never leave me. I am forever shoring up the cracks through which it could enter. 

I am in the slowness at the center, where time does not fly. I live a lifetime in your briefest absence, am reborn in the space between your breaths. 

But if I called and you did not answer. If I reached for you and felt only the cold white sheet. And if my pillow loses your scent, or I find the last strand of your hair beneath a table or tucked within the creases of my couch. What would the loss of you look like beyond the obviousness of your absence? How long until your image fades into the fogginess of my imagination. How long until I catch my breath. 

This is all just a fabrication, a fantasy, a story I am just now writing...

The story of the world is nothing but a love story.

The story of the world contains nothing but you.