Eyes burning, perhaps from wind
through open window,
eighty miles an hour
past the power plant.
Cars peel off behind me,
exiting until the highway’s
empty. No one
is going my way.
The city,
still forty miles ahead,
painting the sky orange
over deepest black.
We’ve been hearing
rumors of riot and fire all day.
It’s the end of the world, some say.
But no one wants proof,
it seems, except me.
How foolish, how
odd that is — how can you
just curl into a ball and die
or hide in the boondocks
without seeing for yourself
that it is indeed the world ending?
In fact, how can you even flee
such a thing when you consider
the world we’re in? Maybe
that’s the best of all possible
pyres up ahead.
I gun it. I go.
I’ve always been the one
who has to know. Stuck my fingers
into wounds once to prove to myself
that the world wasn’t ending
after all, so why wouldn’t I
do this considering how well
it worked out last time?
Dark Matter 
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