Happy Anniversary

Fewer than two thousand words, based on average word length, and I waste 
them on meta-commentary and modifiers--but compact is for cars and not 
last testaments.

It always comes down to a woman. A girl, really, still eighteen and 
seductive like a strungout pixie, her close-cropped locks, then black 
but originally blonde, and large teary eyes hooked me from day one, 
which, not to be confused with Day Zero, took place in a brutalist 
narrow-windowed fluorescent-lit room of learning, I behind the podium, 
she at a desk, one eye blue around the edges, and when I inquired after 
the ring of bell she assured me the newly inserted silver ring near her 
right brow rather than an ex or ex-to-be was to blame.

Four months later as the term turned terminal and the seasons 
metamorphosed from white to green and the days from short to long she 
attended office hours, declared her problematic attraction, and two 
evenings later after digital and analog conversations entangled her 
digits with mine, transformed shy glances into soft stares, and 
exchanged her gift of tongues until the sun rose again, she exited for 
the first time, and I discretely carried her watch, left behind under 
the bed, to class, in my pocket to hide the shame.

Within the week grades were submitted, and this submission, among others  
allowed us to come out at the same time that others went away, and while  
nights were spent in a second-hand single bed, movies, rides through the  
country, and hand-in-hand walks down the streets of middle America 
happened free of guilt or burden.

The differences were the attraction ... the taboo of old-young, 
teacher-student amplified by the convictions of a life-long atheist 
matched with a born-again firey personality--one raised by a sunday 
school teacher mother and Christian rock concerts in every Midwestern  
city--whereas what drew her to me was that she only dated men more  
intelligent than she, that I was all she wanted, and soon we talked of  
children and their names, of futures beyond the academy, of me abroad, 
of her teaching or volunteering in Africa, or traveling through Europe, 
and for the first time in my life I felt I had found the one. But she 
had  found me. Several weeks in she invited me to a family gathering, I 
met the mother--whose presense convinced me that her daughter would age  
gracefully--and the siblings, the father and step-mother and many 
others, and though they loved me, she was careful not to mention my 
heathen ways, and especially not my pro-choice perspective, one that 
would  alienate her mother most of all. All of our early encounters were  
mediated by layers of latex, no fetus would not make it to term and 
neither of us thought ourselves ready for parenthood. One sweaty night 
with the air conditioning roaring she rolled away, propped herself on an  
elbow, and said, "Sometimes being with you almost makes me vomit." And 
so we could not discuss that difference without risking the end.

In August the new term approached and her new apartment and new 
roommates were even closer. Her birthday came on the first of the month 
and we celebrated alone. I volunteered to help with the moving procedure 
but no answer to my phone called reached my ear. Two days stretched to 
three, then to four, and on the fifth my relief at hearing her voice as 
I picked up the receiver was tempered by the quite rational, "I do not 
think we should see each other again."

The semester began and our care at avoiding contact went beyond 
admirable to pathological, until one day, months in, a colleague let 
slip in passing that she had not been to class in weeks, and since by 
this time were had resumed speaking, for hearts on both sides had been 
mended and we both had rebounded with short-term solutions aware of 
their pure functionality, we corresponded and I learned of her departure 
not only from the course, but from the program and the university, and 
of a future plan to move southwest to a relative who had a job 
available, albeit it one of the factory and scarred, calloused hand 
variety. Yet another winter and an anniversary; on that first day 
mid-January I scanned the faces and sighed both in relief and despair. I was my 
last day of teaching.

I awoke midweek on Day Zero alone around midday and only heard of the 
apocalypse, as it were, when she called, the last call I received, and I 
knew intuitively that I had to go to her, find her, help her ... she was 
simply my object, direct and indirect, of affection and love, even these 
months later, and when the rest of the world quite literally came to a 
practical end I had nothing else upon which to focus. Instead of through 
the snow along streets to a self-contained campus I set out south by 
south-west along highways, at first clogged with cars scattering like a 
flock of pigeons at the slightest sign of danger, but as the hours 
became days and those around me--first one of every four, then one of 
three, one of two, two of three, three of four, and more--fell forever 
silent, first in fever then frozen in the fields of white left, right, 
up, down, ahead and behind, the chaos of cars became a graveyard, and 
soon it was impossible even to find a gallon of fuel, for every vehicle 
had burned itself out, as had so many cities and towns, and where once 
smoked chimneys and factories now smoldered cracked brick buildings and 
the wood track-housing of suburbia. Church bells rang, but rang hollow 
and lonely, and as I continued south I transformed, became hollow, 
became chiseled, and became filled, though with a winter emptiness that 
only spring could expunge, and it was still weeks away, though by then I 
had lost track of the days and even weeks. Somehow I did not fall ill.

As I crossed the river into Mexico I passed a long abandoned gas 
station, and from it the static of radio washed over me, the first 
technological sound I had heard many days or nights. The voices, 
English, assured us--yes, there was an us--that there was no apocalypse, 
there was no end, that all would be rebuilt, and we were told where to 
regroup. We had been decimated, they told us, but they were wrong.

At most one tenth had servived, and here, in camps, where around pitiful 
fires huddled not masses but stick figures, heads down, anything that 
could burn was burned; the winter storms were vast, the plague like no 
other, and the hazy grays and greens in the day sky told many that 
something had impacted, even if on the other side of the world. How or 
why we did not know, not then, not now.

Not now, for in a camp now I sit, ill, feverish, and alone with this 
electronic device, filling up the last of its storage capacity before I 
seal it away, seal it away for you. In that last Day Zero phone call she 
told me of you, that you were coming, and I knew that whatever struck 
her down--you would be immune, her sacrifice would lend you those 
antibodies--and that while for me she was a revelation, you would be the 
first child of the apocalypse. I knew your mother, I called her 
Kathleen, and like her you will be beautiful.