I Watched the World End From My Mother’s Balcony

The last sunrise was pale and unconvincing, like a whisper trying to be a scream.

It was just after five in the morning when the emergency alert flashed across my phone. I already knew. We all did. The air had been different for weeks — thinner, quieter, too still. The birds stopped coming. The city began to empty itself of sound. And somewhere beneath my ribs, my bones had started to hum with a kind of grief I didn’t have words for.

I didn’t tell my mother right away.

She was asleep in her chair, wrapped in the yellow knit blanket she’d made during her first round of chemo. That was two years ago. She beat it once. Then it came back, angrier. I think it wanted to go out with the rest of us.

The world wasn’t ending with a bang. No bombs, no alien invasions, no zombie outbreaks. Just the slow unraveling of sky, water, and time. The ice caps collapsed first, and then came the sun — flaring hotter, closer, eating itself in slow motion. The experts said we had months. Then they said weeks. Then it became days.

This morning, they stopped saying anything.

I stepped out onto the balcony with a cup of instant coffee and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. My mom’s balcony always smelled like mint and dust. She kept clay pots of herbs growing on the railing, even after the city banned outdoor water use. She said the rules didn’t apply to the dying.

From the twelfth floor, I could see everything: the cracked streets, the crumbling skyline, the slow line of people walking nowhere. Some carried suitcases, like they still believed there was somewhere else to go. Some just walked, barefoot and dazed, as if they were already ghosts.

I sipped the bitter coffee and let the wind touch my face. It was warm. Too warm for May. Too warm for breathing.

The sky was beginning to change now — a kind of violet bruising across the clouds, like the horizon was holding its breath. I leaned on the railing and tried to remember the sound of laughter in this city. Real laughter. Not the kind people do when they’re scared or pretending.

Behind me, the door creaked open. My mother shuffled out, still wrapped in her yellow blanket. Her hair was thinner than ever, like silver threads floating in the air around her.

“You didn’t wake me,” she said.

“I wanted to let you rest.”

“I’ve done enough resting.”

She stood beside me, looking out over the balcony like a queen surveying a kingdom she’d already said goodbye to. I wanted to say something profound. Something worthy of the moment.

Instead, I said, “The sky’s turning purple.”

She squinted. “It always does that before the storm.”

“There’s no storm coming.”

“No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

We stood in silence for a long time. A flock of birds — or what looked like birds — flew across the sky, headed west. My mother nodded toward them.

“They’re smarter than we are,” she said.

I smiled faintly. “I think it’s too late even for them.”

She looked at me then — really looked — and took my hand. Hers was dry and light, like paper that had been folded too many times. “Are you afraid?” she asked.

I thought about lying. But what was the point?

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded. “Me too. But not of dying. I’m afraid of forgetting.”

“Forget what?”

“Everything,” she said. “The way my father used to whistle. The feel of the first boy who held my hand. Your face when you were born. Your father’s terrible cooking. The songs I never wrote down. I’m afraid the end will erase all that.”

I wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t — that memories live in the stars or something poetic like that. But the stars were fading, and the sky was bleeding, and I didn’t want to lie anymore.

So I said nothing, and she held my hand tighter.

Below us, someone began to play a violin. A real one, not a recording. The sound floated up, defiant and sweet. A song with no name but full of memory. For a moment, I forgot how hot the air was. I forgot the ache in my chest. I forgot the world was ending.

We sat on the balcony until the sky turned gold and the light became unbearable. My mother leaned her head on my shoulder.

“I’m glad we stayed,” she whispered.

And I was too.

Because if the world had to end,

let it end here —

in the scent of mint,

in the grip of an old woman’s hand,

in the quiet between notes

of a song no one would finish.

And in that final, searing moment,

I knew —

we didn’t disappear.

We simply…

folded into the light.