Last Breath

Silent and still, the ocean before them lays. It looks long dead if it wasn’t for the small struggling waves lapping at their feet. Each wave burdened with salt and sand reaching desperately for the shore and heavily retreating, out of breath and dying.

The tired waves, soft and doughy in appearance, bring distant memories of her mother kneading bread in their kitchen. She remembers her mother’s voice softly singing to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams playing on the turntable. She remembers her and her sister sinking their small fingers into the dough, the sun playfully reflecting shimmering light across the room. Back when things had felt warm and secure and safe. Back when the sun was kind.

She closes her eyes and breaths in. One of her last breaths. She wishes the air could be pure and cold. Instead, it is hot and thick, cutting into her lungs and burning with razor sharp intensity.

She turns and buries her face into his shoulder as he bends down and brings his nose to her hair. This could be their last breath. Breathing deeply and painfully through the shards of dust, they draw in as deep as their blistered lungs allow, in the hopes of the familiar scent of a time past. But they only smell sweat and dirt and charred earth, how everything smells in this burning world.

She brings her hand up to her chest and clasps the gold heart-shaped locket hanging from her neck. A gift from her sister. The only thing left from a life once lived.

They had rented a house in the mountains. It was the first time they would have been together since their mother had died two years earlier. And it would be the first time they had spoken.

As she unwrapped the gift, the locket fell into her hand. It was heavier than it seemed and tarnished with age. When she opened the locket, their childish playful eyes laughed back at her, joyful and pure. When life was easy and fun. The locket held sentiment and a yearning for healing and connection. Instead, she was confronted by her sister’s stubborn silence and cold indifference. The entire vacation was strained and awkward and uncomfortable, things left unsaid. Since then, she had not seen or heard from her. But she had never removed the locket. She wonders where her sister is standing right now. She wonders if she is alone.

She opens her eyes and looks beyond his shoulder. Dozens of people are standing on the beach, looking solemnly upward toward the sky. Their faces illuminated with a golden glow. No one is speaking. They have come to watch, their silence united. They are strangers consolidated in a quiet acceptance of their fates. All hope is lost, as they watch the sky lose hope in itself.

She follows their gaze up, struggling to see. Everywhere is too bright, too hot, too full of fire. Sky, land, and ocean indistinguishable from each other, a mass of fiery intensity, burning her eyes and her face. Through squinting eyes, she barely makes out a shape. It seems deeper in colour than the rest of the sky. Blood red. It is heart shaped.

She smiles dryly to herself. The irony that this star, which will destroy all that was known, and make all memories obsolete and non-existent, would mockingly hold in its core, a heart. The symbol of all that was cherished, cared for, and loved. The very thing she clutches in her hand right now.

She watches, as she grasps onto her own heart, a heart beating full of memories and love and regrets, until she can hold on no longer. She watches as the sky rips open and plunges to the ocean in long brilliant flames. As the star before her, which had once created the beginning and all that was, now creates the end. Her end. Her last breath.