It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.

Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?

We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.

Good night, sweetheart," he says. "Good bye, sweetheart," I say. And it's so casual, so innocent that he doesn't suspect a thing.

Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.