Postcards from the End of the World

The news had been counting down for weeks. Forty-two days until the asteroid made landfall, the scientists said, give or take a few hours. People coped in their own ways—some fled inland, some held rooftop parties, some barricaded themselves in basements stocked with years of canned beans. I chose to do what I’d always done when life made no sense: pour myself a coffee, sit by the window, and watch the mailman shuffle down the street. It was on one of those mornings, with thirty-nine days left, that the first postcard arrived. The handwriting was hers.

It was a small square of faded blue, the kind you’d find in a dusty souvenir rack. A picture of the Eiffel Tower under a sky streaked with gold. On the back, in her looping script, she wrote: Wish you were here. Still can’t get used to the way the city smells like fresh bread in the mornings. Love, Anna. My hands trembled so badly I almost dropped it. Anna had been gone for three years—buried under a hill outside of town with her favorite sunflowers planted at her head.

The next one came two days later. Venice this time. Gondolas drifting through water so still it looked like glass. She wrote about the sound of bells from St. Mark’s, about feeding crumbs to pigeons by the hundreds. She teased me for never liking birds. The date stamp was fresh, the ink un-smudged. The postmark, impossibly, was from that week. I turned it over and over in my hands, trying to find the trick. Perhaps someone had found her old journals, I thought, and was playing a cruel game. But there was no one who knew those private details—like the way I hated birds but she always fed them anyway.

By the time the third postcard arrived, I’d stopped pretending it was anything but her. It was from Santorini, whitewashed houses spilling down to a sapphire sea. She wrote about the taste of grilled octopus, the tang of lemon and salt, the way the sunset turned the whole island the color of her favorite sweater. She signed it Forever yours, no matter how much time is left. I read that line until the words blurred into the image behind them. The world outside my window went on collapsing in its slow-motion panic, but inside my apartment, it felt like I’d been pulled into another timeline.

The postcards kept coming, each from a place we’d once dreamed of visiting but never could. Kyoto in spring, cherry blossoms drifting like pink snow. The pyramids at Giza, sand catching in her hair in the photo. The Northern Lights in Iceland, green fire curling across the sky. I pinned them to my kitchen wall, a growing constellation of impossible goodbyes. The countdown on the news ticked lower each day—twenty, fourteen, ten. But each morning, without fail, the mailman left me another slice of the life we’d never had together.

On the morning there were only five days left, I received two postcards at once. The first was from a place I didn’t recognize—a black sand beach under a silver moon. She wrote only: Almost there. The second was blank on the front, just a stormy gray, like the color before rain. On the back, in her smallest handwriting, she wrote: When the time comes, follow the water. I didn’t understand it, but I tacked it to the wall with the rest, feeling the weight of the pattern I couldn’t see.

The day before the end, no postcard came. The wall felt incomplete without its daily addition. The air outside was electric with fear and resignation—neighbors shouting, strangers crying in the streets. That night, I dreamed of her standing on the black sand beach, holding out her hand to me. Behind her, the water glittered under the moon like liquid silver. She didn’t speak, but I understood. I woke before dawn, packed a bag, and drove east toward the coast.

When the asteroid came, it was not fire but light that filled the sky—white, blinding, endless. I was standing at the edge of the sea when it hit, the water surging toward me in a wall taller than any building. And in that moment, I saw her—clear as the day we met—walking toward me through the water, her dress billowing like a sail. She smiled, and I stepped forward. The wave broke, and the world dissolved into salt and sun. The last thing I felt was her hand in mine, warm and real, as if we were finally beginning our journey.