Author: Kathleen Bryson

The moon was out that night and had turned to a slight pink. Taffy coloured, maybe cotton candy fresh from the sweating fairground. The moon was pastel. That is how one can be delicate about things; the moon can set a good example. I walked inside the house and there you were again. The whole world had died. And wasn’t it weird, I was always spitting at the end of us that I wouldn’t get together with you again even if you were the last person on Earth. We never get together again. Other than me, now you were the last person on Earth
I asked whether you had done the dishes yet because you hadn’t. And you never had done them when we were together either.
I want to work on the painting. You expressed this quite forcefully and threw a cup of coffee not in my direction but towards the door.
I really hoped it’s you that’s going to mop that up later, I was about to say to you. It doesn’t matter if you paint a masterpiece the only person that will ever see is me, I was about to say to you. I didn’t feel like having coffee thrown in my direction though. Our feral dog we had rescued three weeks ago had died, too.

I went out on the deck and stood barefoot on its slats. I had never thought about it before. Wood is organic but dead. We think it’s lively and natural foods but it’s dead. Our house here was on the tip of a field on the tip of the world. The fumes of the nucleovirus were salmon coloured and still some distance away. It was quite possible they would never reach us.
That was why the moon was pink though; it wasn’t for any beautiful reason. When we first got together you would sing corny songs to me like moon river or late at night when everything is still and the moon comes creeping over the hill but you know I never thought that it would be you when I was crawling across deserted streets in rags. I’ll be waiting patiently for you. Because I love you true. Oh yes, indeed I do. Oh baby come out, out, beneath the everglades. See the moon, see how she promenades… I had been realising for quite some time that I had been singularly, nightmarishly immune. I had seen a standing, walking person in the distance and honestly, at that point, I was not even fearful of attack by strange men the way I would normally and justifiably be. I was just grateful for another living person and I was so happy rising to my feet and walking towards the miracle and then my face fell. It had been fourteen years. Obviously, you weren’t too happy it was me either. But now we are stuck with us and there we are.
God, even when we were together we never had regular sex and now we’re not having sex at the end of the world either. I wonder whether I should go back inside the house which now stinks of weed from your artistic inspiration.
But I think I’m going to wait a little bit longer out here for a while. I’m looking at the moon and I wish it would turn some other colour. Blue moon maybe, that was always our song.