THE END OF BLUEBIRD DAYS
by Brandon McWilliams

No one is really surprised when the sky comes crashing down. It’s been threatening for a while
now, glowering like a portrait of a disapproving patriarch over the mantle. It was something of a
relief, really; now that the worst had happened, what was left to be afraid of?
It started with an ominous creaking, the sound of metal pushed to failure and the snapping of
great ice sheets. This continued for three days, just long enough for it to almost feel normal, for
people to imagine that maybe it was just another strange thing in the long line of inexplicable
events heralding the end of the world. The disappearance of the color orange had been
disconcerting, as had the time when all the birds began to chant meaningless strings of verse at
twilight rather than their usual chorus of songs. Compared to that, some general creaking was
practically normal.
Then the cracks appeared.
They came like the inversion of clouds. Patches of the noon sky would suddenly wink out,
robin’s egg blue to vanta black in the space between blinks.
Its not as if any great slabs of sky stuff fell to crush the buildings below. That would have been
more sensible ot us. A threat, certainly, but one that we could run from. These patches just
opened, a brooding eye leading to the blackness between what we thought of as something and
what we thought of as nothing.
And they grew. And they grew.
By teatime, most of the horizon was gone. The afternoon sun hung stranded in a fragment
surrounded by void. We looked down at our shoes, hurrying back to the comfortably contained
space of homes and offices, where we didn’t have to look at the sky. By evening, the cracks
seemed to have slowed and the creaking had subsided to a dull groan at the edge of hearing.
People began to relax as the familiar chanting of the birds marked the end of another day. We
breathed sighs of relief. Some even smiled, pretending the blank holes were just patches of
starless night sky. A final, all encompassing snap was all the warning we got before the weight
of all that wasn’t our world came crashing down.

Author Bio:

Brandon McWilliams is an environmental educator, writer, and grad student studying the real-world impacts of climate narratives. Their work has appeared in Hidden Compass Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and Fragments, among others. When not writing, they climb tall things, cook needlessly elaborate meals, and get really excited about moss.

Artist Bio:

Howie Good's latest book is Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and handmade collages from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.