End Times
by Bailey Cunningham
Inspired by “The Domestic Apologies” by Dustin Parsons in Brevity
Goodbye to Stars
You are greedy, eating up elements like an all-you-can-eat buffet. You convert hydrogen and helium and carbon into radiance so startling it inspires religions. When these atomic brews dry up, you stretch out into the cosmos, turning red like an angry toddler who doesn’t know existence has limits. Then you snap back into yourself, hungry and cold. No one sees you die until years after you’ve gone.
Goodbye to Dinosaurs
Everyone’s favorite extinction. Scaly clunkers, chicken-eyed brats. You were not star-proof. When the comet arrived, did it turn the sky into an ocean of light? Did it look like something beautiful had come for you?
Goodbye to House Plant
You had the most beautiful leaves only a few weeks ago. Green discs I wanted to stuff in my coin purse. Every bit of you was a triumph of soil and sun. If I had known how much you’d miss fresh air, I never would have carried you indoors. You used to be green as a crayon. Now you are the color of a watery margarita. You wilt.
Goodbye to Mole
They were worried you were full of evil cells. They thought you might have malicious malware somewhere in your pigment. Password-breaking genomes turning summer tans into tumors. Instead, they burned you off my thigh.
Goodbye to Childhood Home
You are all seventies all the time. I love every inch of your disco self. Each wall contains at least three different colors if I press my nail into it, like cutting into a jawbreaker. My mother could never stop painting you squash yellow and currant red and pumpkin orange. The new buyers might not like your current shade. They might blow you up and start from scratch.
Goodbye to All the Honey Bees
Fluffy thumbs bathing in gold dust. Eyes like voids or celebrity sunglasses. You do as you’re told, very good bee. I have no flowers in my yard. You are trying to pull pollen from a dollar store cup.
Goodbye to Very Old Dog
We will tend to your death with a practiced hand. You are not our first ancient canine refusing food. We will do right by you. We will pay for the house visit.
Goodbye to Favorite Bed Shirt
I bought you eight years ago. You are huge and have a design of a fairy printed on your front with wings that drape along the ground and big eyes that announce helplessness. You are the softest thing in the universe. But, like the universe, there are holes in every part of you. I try to tie you together, to make you last. In the end, you go in the trash. I think you disintegrate as soon as I shut the lid.
Goodbye to Ovarian Cyst
They were worried you were full of evil cells. Password-breaking genomes turning femalehood into tumors. I made them take pictures of me in my gown before reaching for you.
Goodbye to Polar Bear
Animal Planet crewmembers watch you swim for days. You must be so tired. You look all wrong for a bear, too skinny. More seal than furry winter Hercules. You make little noises through your nose that remind me of birds. There are no birds where you are. The birds know there is no land for nesting. But you are still hopeful, paddling onward with paws the size of garbage can lids. I know the crew aren’t assholes for not helping you, that they’ll do more useful conservation work filming you dying than they would if they saved you. I know this, but in my head they’re still assholes.
Goodbye to Satellite
You are the metal dragonfly telling us if it will rain. Thank you. You do endless loops through a current of astral soup, sharing space with other mindless bodies who turn radio waves into words back home. Rain showers Saturday. Total downpour Monday. When you get worn out, no one comes to help you. They ignore you until you’ve used up all your fuel. Then you blink off. You keep riding the current. You keep gliding through your soup. Stars die somewhere far behind you. Planets shadow each other. What does it feel like being out there all alone? Is it very big?
Goodbye to Bones
There are so many of you, I need to start my farewells now. You are very beautiful out there in the dark of me. Bleachy calcium wads raising my ankles, chewing my breakfasts, holding my brain. You do your work in silence. Millions of years ago I was jelly turning somersaults in prebiotic broth. Millions of years ago I didn’t know what it was to hold my shape. When the humans are gone and you’re not—when they dig you up from the dirt—I hope they know where the tibia goes, the clavicle, the carpals. I hope they lay us out correctly in their textbooks.
BAILEY CUNNINGHAM lives in coastal Washington where she is the consulting editor of Bellingham Review. Her work has been nominated for the Best of the Net, and appears or is forthcoming in places such as Lunch Ticket, Contrary Magazine, and the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.