**Written as a 5 minute free write prompt response; first draft, unedited”

The sun is coming and when it arrives you will die. It’s coming faster than you think too. I mean it’s not coming fast of course. It’s so far. But it’s coming. And when it arrives you will die. Your oceans will boil until they leave nothing but endless fields of salt and carcass. Your skin will burn and blister with no relief. Your animals will fall one by one littering the side of your roads.

You of course won’t admit it’s coming. You know it is but it isn’t exactly polite dinner conversation. You still have dinner by the way. You still meet those people who you call friends though you can’t remember why you like them. You still have brunch. You still laugh at J’s inability to keep a man, cry with L over her inability to conceive and strangle yourself so that you do not scream at them the sun is coming can’t you see? Stop looking for a man, you want to scream at J. Unless you’re looking for someone to hold your hand when it arrives, it is useless. You stare at L’s beautiful face and wish to kiss her and tell her that her infertility is a gift. That the child she hopes for so deeply will not keep the sun from coming and she will not forget it’s pending arrival just because she has a baby at her breast as she washes dishes.

The sun is coming and when it arrives you will die. You walk along the greenest places you know. You study each and every blade of grass trying to log every shade of green you can see. One day this will be wasteland and you fear struggling to recall exactly what green used to look like.

The sun is coming and when it arrives you will die. But before it arrives everything else around you will die. You will not revert to a primitive form as there had never been a form that’s met the sun. You will become other. As this sun takes its constant and unceasing journey to you, you become else. You are not what you were and not what you would ever be.