I walked to the end of the world. 

 

I used to visit all the time. The 11:55 AM ding that announced the end of third-period English and the beginning of lunch would lift me out of the dismal high school halls and plop me down for half an hour at the end of the world. There, at the end of the world, I would eat my turkey sandwich and my kettle-cooked chips and the two Oreos placed meticulously in the little lunch container I carried in my little half-thawed PackIt in my little backpack. I would brush the crumbs from my jeans and watch the end of the world shift and groan and creak. And I would listen. When 12:25 PM rolled around, I would return to the dismal high school halls with just enough time to get to my 12:30 fourth-period history class. Every. Single. Day.

 

Eventually, as we often tend to, I got too busy to visit the end of the world. I had responsibilities, such as forgetting about the end of the world, focusing on the present to block out the future, and paying taxes. My absence gave the end of the world a chance to change. I didn't get to sit each day, from 11:55 AM to 12:25 PM every weekday (save for school breaks), just to watch how the end of the world changed. Years had passed without even a glimpse of the grandeur. 

 

Today was different. Today, I found time. I took a walk, determined to walk until my legs were burning yet numb, aching with each step, just begging to stop. I kept walking past that point. There was so much to see, and so little time to see it. There is an end of the world, after all. By the time the sun was growing low on the horizon and dusk's odd hues were casting shadows across my path, I was exhausted and ready to stop. My walk had run its course. 

 

The soft scuffle of my footsteps–shoe soles against cracked concrete sidewalks–stopped at once. Ding. Like an elevator reaching the top floor. Like the long-awaited notification lighting up an otherwise dark phone screen. Like the beginning of a song, or perhaps the end. I craned my neck to see what I already expected to see, and what was so unexpected to my eye. The end of the world loomed before me, its grandeur no less than ever before yet its structure so different than any time before then. A smile spread across my lips, the victorious smile you get at the sight of something nostalgic you've come to understand in a new way. As if you've arrived at a destination you never knew you had.

 

Some people feared the end of the world. They feared there would be pain and suffering and loss and death: all those things people fear in the presence of ignorance. They feared Gods and elementary-school enemies they were still following on Instagram and policemen hiding in those little gravel pull-offs along high-speed stretches of the highway. They feared the future because we were taught it was the right thing to do, once the future wasn't as promising as it once had been. 

 

Yet standing there, with the end of the world looming overhead, it was impossible to feel anything but awe. Maybe with a touch of nervous excitement. The end of the world shifted and groaned and creaked as it always had, offering ambient sounds of familiarity, yet there was a change in both of us. A touch of intimidation simmered deep in my chest, and the end of the world felt less like a place I existed in, and more like a place I was looking at. Like going from theater to film, a wall being built between us. 

 

I stood on a rock. Most of the world was a rock when it was ending. Igneous rock bubbled from beneath the crust of the earth and erupted in catastrophes. I stood far enough away, watching the world fall apart in slow motion. Something had collided with it. A comet, perhaps, or a moon. A shard of another planet. Something too large for me to fathom. When I first saw the end of the world. it was only just beginning to end. Mile-long chunks of the surface were just beginning to fracture and break and slip from their puzzle-piece slots in the tectonic layout of the earth. There was more now. More breakage. More collisions. Whatever hit our world was starting to crumble and burrow deep into the earth's mantle. There was the steady, comforting sound of rock against rock, grinding, churning the semi-liquified depths of the earth and setting both celestial bodies into a union of chaos. And it was beautiful.

 

When I was younger, in between those fateful minutes of 11:55 and 12:25, I'd enjoyed the solitude. Sitting and watching. Basking in the slow-motion destruction of all that was known and all that would be. I didn't know where I was. Or when I was. None of that mattered at the end of the world. It was quiet in all the ways quiet should be: a quiet that asks you to strain your ear to understand the silence. I had basked in the lonely glory of it all, yet times were different now.

 

Because for the first time, I had walked to the end of the world. And for the first time, I wasn't alone. Maybe this was only one time, one special moment of being in the right place at the right time, where paths crossed and destinies lit the night with their power. I was at the end of the world, but I wasn't there alone. Because for the first time, I had you.