Inevitable

I saw the end at the beginning. The whole story, our whole story, laid out in front of us like a path, twisty and dark in places, lush and alive with light in others.

It was too long to see the end for myself but still I knew it. I could feel it in the grooves of my skin, the way the path would eventually become unpaved and uneven, difficult to traverse, the lights turning off one by one like a stadium, leaving us in the darkness of our loneliness. I could hear the hoarse whisper of loss standing there on the precipice of everything.

I looked at you, dark and nebulous and cocksure, and I knew we’d do this anyway, stupidly, clumsily intoxicated with each other. And that every step I’d want to be smart and sure and cautious and to blame you for dragging me this way, all the while knowing I’d willingly held your hand and walked this with you because it was exactly where I wanted to be.

When we’d stumble, I’d try to stop our momentum, knowing we were hurtling toward inevitable disaster, trying to be the hero of our story and save us from ourselves. But we are a supernova and a black hole; an explosion and a void. We are ruin. We were inevitable.

And here we are. Standing in blackness, bare earth beneath our feet. Still together, still clinging to each other, stupidly, fruitlessly. We were a temporary reprieve from somewhere else, somewhere safer we should have been and we knew it and we knew better.

We end as I knew we would: spectacular, fiery burn out, leaving only scorched earth where we could have been.