First Pale

Witnessing the fading of our planet, the ground beneath our feet turning pale.

The crops drying up, the fields darkening, the trees breaking like fragile bones under a sky filled with thick smoke.

Insects covering our windows in a moving, pulsating mass, their bodies so tightly packed that nothing could be seen beyond them.

The gutters becoming blocked with dead bodies—possums swollen and rigid, cockroaches transformed into fragile shells. A white layer settling over everything, sticking to the skin, the breath, the thoughts. The sky, covered in smog so heavy and high, felt like a seal, a barrier holding something in—or keeping something out. Those days moved slowly, filled with tension and strain. I cannot pinpoint what initiated the beginning of the constant rain. However, it arrived without interruption, enveloping the horizon in a blur and covering the streets in a deluge. It swept over the rooftops, turning streets into streams, chilling us to the core with its icy touch. The earth turned into a quagmire, swallowing houses with its shifting weight. Children slipped and were carried away like scattered leaves in the muddy mess. Parks and boulevards bubbled over with destruction. The atmosphere became heavy, a living entity that seeped into both our lungs and the walls around us. Just as we were ready to navigate the flooded streets in boots and canoes, the water unexpectedly transformed. It solidified. The sky became white with cascading rocks. Ice fell heavily in large chunks, breaking trees, smashing car windshields, and bruising flesh. This bizarre weather phenomenon occurred in the final week of July. The world was supposed to be scorching, but instead, I witnessed a man succumb to a hailstone the size of a clenched fist—his glasses shattered, his teeth buried in blood. The backyard flooded up to our knees, with the weight of the ice creating a deafening stillness. The storm's oppressive sound reverberated in my ears, its cadence entering my mind. Sleep eluded me.

We lay awake, anticipating roofs collapsing, walls cracking, and the inevitable moment when the force of it all would come crashing down on us. The frost devoured the electricity grid, turning highways into dangerous obstacles and causing cars to blend into strange artworks of glass and metal. Certain roads remained closed indefinitely. The chill erected barriers where there were once none. We found ourselves in the faint silence of candle flames, gazing at each other as if we were unfamiliar with our own homes. When the television screen eventually lit up again, the news channels didn't bother recounting the events.

They merely displayed the deceased—name after name after name—scrolling past like the credits of a movie we regretted watching.