We walked along busy streets, crowded with people whose shapes seemed to be carbon prints of one another, whose faces were a blur of similarities. I gripped your hand tightly and hidden behind the noisy cars passing us by, I heard your muffled, but audible, heartbeat. Strange, I’d never listened so closely before to notice the way our hearts beat as if synchronized from the beginning of time. And even though we were surrounded by traffic and voices, by footsteps and movement, it felt as though we were alone in a world all to ourselves. I took no notice of the people around us, as if we flowed right through them like ghosts through walls. We heard no sounds but each others’ faint heartbeats followed by nervous breaths and short, trembling movements. This was right. This was perfect.

This was everything.

Even on our last night on Earth, we danced underneath the falling cinders of our surroundings. We sang loudly and shamelessly, beautiful elegies of life’s perfection in this moment. Their world may have been over, but ours was just beginning. You held me under the cherry blossom, reflecting its pink petals back at the moon, and out across the waters of the farthest beach. We kissed and it was beautiful, an artwork in itself; a masterpiece that Da Vinci could never have painted. The world as we knew it was over, and we were its survivors, born into a world to call our own. I never noticed before that moment the way your eyes shimmered when you looked back at me. The stars overhead were but a mystery of falling lights, perhaps it was the sky’s way of weeping. Its stars held no comparison to your glow.

You tangled your fingers in my hair and held me against your chest, inhaling deep, slow breaths. Our mouths met once more as we pressed our lips together. Taking your hands, I couldn’t help but stare up at you as I opened my mouth to say the words that we both knew were on the tips of our tongues.

“I love you”, I whispered as the wind gently carried the echo of my words into the atmosphere, far off. And we knew in that moment, as the world went silent, that this was our eternal.