...when I told you that I loved your pretty face.




The world was coming to an end. The sky is falling. The stars are dying.

She is immensely pleased.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

She sits late at night and stares at the sky. She counts stars. Deep within the quiet folds of silicon and electricity, she calculates possibilities, turns over variables. There are endless ways for things to happen and she is privy to them all. At night, she is a halo of pleased blue and brilliant green, the color of mint, the color of curiosity. She admires the simplicity of the moths, the last few night insects that can stand the cold.

Imagine if you will, taking the persistence of the cockroach and giving it human intelligence. Imagine what you could accomplish. No baggage. No emotions. No excess. Just work, constant work.

For all of her cursing of insects, she respects them more than she respects any human being. An insect is not fettered, not restrained by moral compunction. It does what is necessary to survive and nothing more. That, boys and girls, is blue. That is pleasure. That is simplicity.

That is perfection.

A powder white thing, membrane delicate wings and tall, would be ( run, rabbit, run ) ear antennae, lands on her palm. It is considered and cataloged. She will never forget the way it looks.

"Life," She says quietly, the child, the mother, the whore, and the harlot stumbling, tripping, catapulting out of her mouth, "n-neeeeneeds deeeeneeds deeeeath t-to make it p-p-preeeeeeto make it precious."

She closes her hand.

The world dies.