10-Fade to Black

In my movie

the Rapture will only lift the broken, burnt

bodies of the people who caught the first hot wave

of the bomb blast, locked outside the lead-lined

steel-girded and concrete-shielded cathedrals

housing the elite of humanity. In my movie

angels and seraphim will lift only the dead

lying in the streets outside

the crumbling ruins of civilization

the children barricaded beneath

kitchen sinks, huddled against one another

waiting for their parents to come home from work

or the store. In my movie, the upper

echelon of society

will emerge from protective cocoons

stocked with cases of tinned meat and

sparkling water to find they’ve inherited

a world burnt beyond recognition, unfit for

habitation, abandoned by God. In

my movie, these people will fall to

the ground, scream, “Why, why, why”, or some similar

hackneyed cliché, just before the picture fades

and the screen grows cold and black. It’s not

a perfect ending, but it’s all

I’m able to come up with.

It’s all I’ve got.