nostradom

Stars forgot the names they wore. Planets drifted from their vows, slipping loose from gravity like rings from thinning fingers. The universe did not explode at once. It unraveled politely. First, the clocks began to stutter— afternoons lingering too long, midnights arriving twice. Light traveled tired and crooked, arriving years after the people who had waited for it were gone. Then the galaxies came apart. Not dramatically. No trumpet of fire, no righteous collision. Just spirals thinning into ash, arms of stars unthreading themselves into the black seam of forever. Somewhere, a moon lost orbit and wandered like an orphan animal. Its oceans lifted into space in silver ribbons. Fish turned slowly in the vacuum, glittering for a moment before becoming memory. There were still people then. They built cathedrals from radio towers, sent desperate prayers through static, hoping someone at the edge of existence still knew how to hold things together. But the laws themselves were dying. Numbers changed in the mouths of scientists. Maps folded into impossible angles. Distance behaved like grief— stretching infinitely around small things. At the end, the stars did not go dark. They simply left. One by one, they vanished from the sky as though called home by a voice deeper than time. And when the final sun disappeared, the universe became unbearably quiet. Not empty. Quiet. As if creation, exhausted at last, had placed a finger to its lips and asked eternity to listen to the sound of everything coming undone.