if you die in a dream, do you die in real life?

A phrase is lingering. Peel away. I wonder if it means, 

from each other? It’s a forgettable phrase;

a passing thought. Ready to rest, his collar is unfastened down

to a buttonhole on his chest, his pulsing throat happily temperate

and the skin there—an unlikely gel of sweat and simple freedom. 

His arm—my upward cradle; he has a hold that prepares 

someone as cautious as me, to follow his future anywhere. We stand in

the lounge and in love’s stoical lock, looking out of the window

on to the street at night. A plunge of silver is all-consuming,

swallowing the room in sudden, gorgeous greed. 

Together, we release the catch on the front door and

over the opposite rooftops, the moon looks as it does when

they sing amore. Swollen. Superimposed. Cinematic. We call

out an invitation to my grandparents, who gather with us in time

to see bats scattering like beads, bewildered by an irregular dawn.

1945 was the year my grandfather was born; a teenager in the age 

of space exploration. Collected magazine or newspaper clippings in the manner that

the country girls gathered flowers. Now, he looks far away into the night sky at the glowing moon, 

takes in his family, and takes in, finally,

his wife, my grandmother, and says goodbye. Peacefully. Resigned.

There is a weight in what he knows, and what we don’t yet: his expression

debates whether fatal phenomena becomes less frightening 

with knowledge. A mumble in calculation with himself, is his closing theory 

in a life dedicated to science and the celestial. It’s exploding itself, 

or they’ve exploded it, because something worse is walking this way.  

I’ve failed to observe the spectre ahead. It inflates without relent, 

pumping wide, and comprehensive of its own implosion. At the last words 

of my grandfather’s disclosure, the entire surface fractures. Brittle, jagged

and surprisingly earthlike; like grassless ground in the wake of a drought. 

The end of the world is the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.

The moon breaks with the brightness of the sun. Fire wriggles between the fragments as they rain. In their growth, descending to earth,

my grandfather presses the door closed. His understanding was real.

We are all emptily uncertain, yet calm. My eyes shut themselves,

my brain understands that it’s not necessary to know what kills me. 

To hasten the inevitable, my grandfather returns to the statistical default

that has grown with him. Technically, it won’t reach us for another—

I laugh helplessly as he talks, at the prospect that it all ends today. At least, 

disease didn’t ensnare them. At least, their deaths were monumental 

in universal history, sealed with the human race, and their descendants.

I think about love and what will become of my writings. Even if they

survive incineration, they will never be salvaged. They will never be read. 

Forgiveness is crucial. I can’t say goodbye to my parents so I say it aloud as if everyone I’ve ever loved is listening. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.

I am less afraid than I thought, starting to remember things.

A walk I’ll not walk again, and a coincidental conversation I had on one

with my grandfather, about afterlives. Can a scientist have conviction

in something as unknown? He said, you’ve just described creation.

I wonder if we were thinking of the same occasion because he says this:

I hope we meet each other again, in whatever comes after.

I refuse, still, to accept a visual, so it is just his lasting voice—but I gauge 

that the sentence was his conclusion that there is no time to say more.

Can I use these seconds to imagine the flower path; around the 

church where we were due to get married in summer? How odd

a marital promise seems, contrasted with the impermanence of our lives—

and yet, if we had lived, his soul would have become the most beautiful 

thing I have ever witnessed, superseding celestial collapse. He knows

I’ve never been sold on religion but I’ve always adored faith, and I have to confess I don’t know where that places me now but I’m not scared because 

I know what I believe in and I know he is here somewhere.

I dare to look; desire trying to make me his as we die. Black dust and

astronomical glitter barrels through the door as if the wooden panel

wasn’t even there. The grandparents are submerged,

and no longer visible, settled and sleeping, now—

he’s my only light—the last light left at the end of the world.

I’m trying not to think of what comes next, but I know he believes

that there is heaven, so I tell myself that the universe is calling him home.

I wrap all the times we said forever, together with a smile,

and try not to cry. Tomorrow is as promised

as the moon in the sky. Peel away the apprehension and love tonight. 

© Mollie Mardel