Starglass

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Know that I never would have left the earth if it hadn’t already been doomed.

They told us that we had five years before the asteroid came. There was no way to deflect it—no way to shield our world. First panic set in, then the riots. They burned buildings down, packed government offices full of bombs. You could walk through the city streets and think the roads were made of broken glass. These were the end times.

At first I was preoccupied. Annie, my lover of thirteen years, was dying. Cancer. And so I ignored the clamoring and the frantic hysteria. I cared for her, bathed her, and spooned her soup until she could no longer eat.

A few days before she went—only hours before she lost all words—she put her fragile hand on my hand.

“Find a way to live on,” she said. “I can’t bear dying if you’re going to die too.”

I loved my home. I loved the way the sky, red with pollution, shivered between the skyscrapers before a storm. I loved the sidewalks, marked with the handprints of people long dead, and I loved how the pavement felt beneath my feet. I loved the feeling of anticipation as I waited in the dark subway station, leaning into the tunnel to watch for the lights.

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