a sea of houses comes rolling in
rusty roofs bending
breaking, crashing
shingles popping like fireworks
(expressing their independence, they die)
while you and I
(nothing more than genetic flotsam, now)
turn our eyes from a shattered-glass snowfall
and dream of the winters of our youth

this will be the end of days

...

this will be clouds folding into the earth
thunderstorms growling from foxholes
rain tumbling from rivers
as a clumsy conflagration stumbles into our skin
stealing our silhouettes
painting our ghosts on walls
(oh, had only we learned such passive resistance)
as you and I
(only numbers and figures, we know)
truly wear our hearts on our sleeves

when the world turns inside out

...

when sandcastles swirl into mountains
only to melt and flatten
until the rock has no wrinkles
when flowers shrink into their stems
like amateur stop-animation
when grass stalks and grandchildren
twist ever upward into smoke


and I no longer have any metaphors
for what the world made me love about you

this will be the end of days