Hot. Bright. Tangled fingers. Running. A gasping tickle of breath between two lips. Heat flooding the body. Ecstasy. Pulsating waves of lust. You. Beside me. Eyes glistening with something unspeakable, something electric and melancholy and warm. Tumbling forward. Entwining in delicate desperation. Lips brushing together. Bursts of wild hued color. Hands roaming, hearts beating in tandem, eyes closed against cold reality. Needing more. Shedding jackets and tee shirts and jeans . Clinging to each other like two leaves in a hurricane. Unfathomable grey eyes meeting with mine. Kissing fiercely, hotly, desperately. Knowing the darkness is coming. Coming for us directly. There is no escape. We mold together with divine perfection as the cosmos crashes down, as cities shatter and blood trickles from the necks of the innocent and everything that ever was collapses with an anguished roar and the light goes out forever.

We stand. Awash in darkness, feeling for the hand of the other. Arms outstretched. Praying with every fiber of being that our fingers will brush something besides emptiness.

I reach for you, heart stuttering frantically. You will be there. You have always been there. Yet there is no sign of you this time; no stirring of human life.

There's nothing left in the universe but a hollow breath of wind, singing and moaning in empty space.

Hope is extinct.