Beneath a Burning Sky

It didn’t happen all at once.

The forgetting. The unraveling. The slow rot of memory.

They had promised the end of war. Promised a cleaner world, greener cities, human purpose. But somewhere between the updates and the notifications, we lost the thread. Not because it was ripped from us, but because we let it slip while scrolling.

We did not notice when silence became normal.

We did not notice when laughter turned into reaction buttons.

We did not notice when grief became something to meme.

---

The war—the final one—was not televised.

Only those who paid for premium access got the real footage. Everyone else just saw filtered clips: heroic AI drones, strategic victories, and sanitized explosions.

No one saw the faces of the children.

No one saw the dogs searching for their masters in the rubble.

No one saw the sky bleed.

---

We became strange things, post-war.

Robot and beast.

Cynical and praying.

And still… the children draw suns in yellow crayon.

Big, naive circles in the corners of burnt paper.

Their parents watch them and feel something—

A sting, like nostalgia mixed with fear.

They wonder: Is it wrong to give them hope?

But they do not stop them.

---

The trauma was too large to carry whole.

So it leaked.

Out through sarcasm.

Out through parody.

Out through streams and hashtags and filters.

"LOL just a nuke drop 💀💥" someone tweeted.

It got 2.7 million likes.

Because what else could we do?

---

You could buy mourning packages now.

$4.99/month for Eternal Remembrance™

They’d turn your dead into voice filters.

Your mom, whispering bedtime stories through smart speakers.

Your brother, texting you from archived chat logs.

It was comforting.

It was horrifying.

And still, we subscribed.

---

The stars didn’t care.

Mars opposed Pluto, or so the astrologers said.

But no one really knew what that meant.

Only that everyone was tired,

and everything—everything—hurt.

---

The churches were empty now.

The gods, deaf or disinterested.

We wrote new prayers in the margins of code.

"Amen," we said, to no one.

"Amen for the wounded."

"Amen for the blind gods who made us."

"Amen for the algorithms that decided who lived."

There were no victories left.

Only the data.

Only the burned cities.

Only the ache in our bones.

---

People forgot what real touch felt like.

They sent heart emojis, watched ASMR hugs, paid for VR therapy.

But they could no longer hold grief in their hands.

They tried once—gathered in the ruins of a park.

Someone sang.

Someone else wept openly.

A drone mistook the group for a protest and dispersed it with gas.

That was the last time anyone tried.

---

Sometimes, the ghosts came back.

You’d hear a familiar voice on the wind.

Or the smell of a favorite dish in a place no stove could reach.

Some said the dead were living inside the cloud,

watching, remembering, maybe even forgiving us.

Others said that was just corrupted code.

---

The children were the only ones who didn’t break completely.

They played with sticks and dirt.

They told stories about heroes who could fly.

One girl built a tower of bones and broken plastic.

She called it “The Monument to the Unnamed.”

No one taught her that.

She just knew.

---

The sky never returned to blue.

It stayed the color of an old bruise—

pale purple, rusted orange, eternal dusk.

Plants grew sideways.

Birds forgot their songs.

Time itself lagged like a slow-loading page.

And still—

People lit candles.

People whispered poems.

People fell in love.

---

In a bunker under what used to be Chicago,

a boy kissed another boy for the first time.

They were both scared.

But they laughed anyway.

Above them, the world burned quietly.

And below, they felt human again.

---

Maybe that’s the real ending.

Not fire or ice.

Not apocalypse or salvation.

Just… being.

A thousand tiny moments—

a kiss, a bark in the dark, a yellow sun drawn on ash—

Reminding us that we are still here.

Still trying.

Still worthy of remembering.

Even if the gods have gone blind.

Even if the algorithms have taken over the altars.

Even if the sky never heals—

---

We are still human.

And that is the only miracle left.