The Last Judgment

by Sherre Vernon
​
​We’ve all seen this film: the world ending,
the family scrambling to flee the threat 
of war or zombies. Somehow, they’re dressed 
at midnight and the tank is full and nothing
that shakes from the walls does more
than set someone to screaming.

It used to be I’d stand there, wishing 
I’d grabbed a bra or better shoes
or a sentimental trinket I could show 
the person next to me in that moment 
of raw connection we’re due 
in times like these.

It did not happen like this for me. 

In my terror, there was a curtain 
separating my face from my body. I could not 
reach – I could not see 
when they lifted you from me, through 
the humming of machines and fluorescent
drugs that held me: but I heard 
your voice and caught 
my breath through the tangled decades 
of this life. No more daydreams 

of apocalypse in the street. Only clarity.
I’ve attached every bookcase to the wall,
moved the frames away from the head
of the bed, practiced bending over you
as the earth shakes.

Every day, I watch the sky for signs, listen 
to the bees. I await a harbinger 
of helicopters and a reckoning 
of sea. But know, my littlest me,

if a tidal wave takes this body, there is no taking
you from me. There is no fear. We are not 
women who turn to salt. We are 
a compassion of fire: we look back, back 
past a burial mound of stars, to the faces
that would shame us, past the hands
that grasp and pull, we rise
in flame and glowing. You are the child 
of the desert sea, granddaughter 

of smoke, breaker of curses, she who purifies

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