We met as the world was ending, in the middle of evacuating the city, as mothers pulled their crying children from their friends, as if getting to the escape buses first would make a difference, when the reality is that there isn’t enough space to take everyone to another city, to another vehicle, to another planet for another life, because we’ve wasted all of our options, we screwed up, and now the world is ending, and people are racing with suitcases and duffle bags, someone’s carrying a boombox—yes, a boombox—blasting “This is The End,” because the wild fires, the fights over food and water, the riots aren't enough to let people know that shit is going down, someone’s rushing by carrying a stack of frozen pizzas, which will probably thaw from the blistering heat outside, but that might not even matter because the stack wavers as hordes of people dart past, gather in groups, demand to be let on the buses, while I, who has given up entirely on surviving, stroll through the chaotic streets in slow motion, when I spot him by the flower kiosk of an old woman who once refused to sell me flowers because she didn’t like my “aura” and she shoo shooed me away with white daisies, the soft petals mixing in the wind with bits of trash, and there he was picking flowers like he had all of the time in the world, smelling the red roses, plucking the ivory gardenias, the yellow carnations, and the purple tulips, and bunched them into a bouquet, which he laid on the wooden table and wrapped with paper with the quickness of a pro—he waved me over like I was his waiting customer and he handed me the colorful bouquet and continued to pick flowers, wrapping them in paper, and soon I was picking flowers, carefully following his lead, as his apprentice, our backs turned to the fires, the running, the buses—we were now florists at the end of the world.