'rose-pink apocalypse' by Sanjana Shankar

by the time we woke up, the sky had turned pink.

it was something out of a fairytale. beautiful and blinding; a color i once would have painted on my bedroom walls. a part of us knew it would end this way, but to live is to hope for better. my sister gazed up at the cotton-candy-sky and asked if i remembered the very last time we saw this scene — The Last Day. her eyes were disillusioned, her mouth turned upward; a study in contradictions. i didn’t respond.  

on The Last Day, our parents had ransacked a supermarket and set up a blanket on the grass, a celebration of my impending graduation under a blush pink airspace. i have a singed, half-torn memento of that very moment: my amma holding me in her arms, my father doubled over in laughter, my sister behind the camera.

the last i saw of them was haphazard headstones in a makeshift cemetery. they had misspelled my mother’s name. my arm is marked still, from my sister’s nails digging into my skin as i dragged her away; a goddess in resplendent rage. but there is no place for rage in empty graves, and there is no place for grief in the apocalypse. there is only staying alive.  

here, now, i hear the high-pitched whistles of missiles coming to claim us, uncaring and inevitable. the pink skies that once heralded joy, are now a ticking clock to our undoing. the world, bathed in a rosy glow, is fated to end. and so are we.

i interlink my sister’s hands in mine, admiring the view.