That was the thing about 2021. We stopped saving love for later. Later felt like a lie. So we loved in grocery store parking lots, through masks and bad Wi-Fi, in arguments about vaccine appointments and who left the window open.
— for everyone who loved through the static
Here’s a draft for a blog post titled — written in a reflective, poetic, slightly melancholic style, as if looking back from a near future. Title: love at the end of the world -2021- love at the end of the world -2021-
And maybe that’s what I’ll remember most. Not the fear. Not the news tickers or the graphs climbing toward tragedy. But the way we held each other at the edge of uncertainty, and decided it was still worth it.
love, apocalypse, memory, hope We didn’t know it then, but 2021 was a year of small endings. Not the dramatic, fire-and-brimstone kind — more like the slow fade of a song you didn’t realize was playing. That was the thing about 2021
We loved like there was no tomorrow — because some days, there almost wasn’t.
[imagined: December 31, 2021]
Love at the end of the world isn’t perfect. It’s messy, tired, anxious, beautiful. It forgets to do the dishes. It cries in the bathroom. It makes dark jokes and holds on too tight.
I remember sitting on a fire escape in April, sharing one pair of gloves with someone I’d only known for three weeks. The city was quiet. No planes. No traffic. Just the sound of us breathing, and the distant hum of a world holding its breath. So we loved in grocery store parking lots,
But it holds on.
And maybe that’s enough.