I Dreamed That Los Angeles was Burning...

I dreamed that Los Angeles was burning, orange fire and black nuclear days having erased it from the cynical heart of California. 

One hundred miles down the road I was sheltering with the one person I loved and the childhood shades of three people I wouldn’t want to spend a brief, bleak eternity with.  The sky was dark as a winter’s midnight and set a-sparkle with bright yellow atomic rain falling sure and steady.

I didn’t care what happened…the why wasn’t relevant…and I didn’t feel panic…when the world was over there’s no point in losing your head, after all. 

That REM song was playing everywhere, gallows irony set to a jaunty beat, and I kept trying to sing along even as I drifted through the house wondering when the pale horse was going to arrive. 

I thought about confessing my sins.  I thought about laughing at the sheer stupidity of the world and the way it was ending.  I thought about carrying one of the people I didn’t want to spend our brief, bleak eternity with off to bed and having angry, bittersweet sex until the yellow rain put us all out of our misery.  I thought about not ever really being who I always imagined myself to be.

I dreamed that Los Angeles was burning…