I remember the end of the world as I knew it. Could I forget?

Could I forget a weekend morning in my ancient chair, reading the articles I'd written, the world I wrote for myself? No.

Could I forget clutching the thin papers I had slaved over, their fragile folds containing my only stability? No.

I could not forget the stories I'd written for the world to see, nor the life I crafted from sentences.

Then the lights went out.

I held the paper to my chest for a moment. Light slipped in through the curtains. People stirred in the street. Soon, there was yelling, ranting, begging. The whole city cried, and the lights would not come on.

days passed, watching from windows, praying in bedrooms, and I held onto the crumpled paper. No one knew anything now. Was this the world, or just a dream, a crisis or only a mistake? Were there empires falling outside? I gripped the crumpled paper. My world was crumpled too.

Until it hit me.

I found the creaky typewriter in the corner of the unused room. I typed slowly, then no longer slowly, for the words came. And I realized I did not need my world.

I stepped into the sun where the fearful huddled, chattering, deperate for information. They saw me, came to me, desperate for the news they had taken for granted.

I hung the paper, the piece of my heart on the doors, the fences, the empty cars. The people read it, and it changed them.

For though lights and cords and plastic worlds can be taken away, love cannot. Even a typewriter knows that.

Could I ever forget the day the paper made its promise? The day it said that even though the light was gone, love stayed? No. No I cannot.