Michael Mungiello
Here are all the things that’ll happen when the world is ending: you’ll be there, to comfort me;
you’ll have forgiven me for what I did to you when I was a boy when I told my 3rd grade teacher
that you were emotionally abusive because you didn’t say please and thank you enough then my
teacher called and you cried in the upstairs bathroom for an hour, and I was outside the door; and
then you’ll say, “I’ve served my purpose & I love you” and you’ll change into a different person;
you may still be the same person; my heart will change; music will play; Beethoven, Mozart,
Wagner, Mahler, Bach, Handel and Berlioz will all be women; I’ll stop having weird itches on my
head and believing it’s big bugs; books will shrink like grapes into raisins or like mature men into
old men; my therapist will reward me for being fully cured by giving me back all the money I’ve
given him over the years; nobody will ever be able to shut off the lights ever again; I won’t want
to turn you into anybody else anymore, not even a reader; the world will be ending; we will fill
with gratitude; even you, in your abjection, in your love for me, even me, in my love for you.
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Michael Mungiello was born in New Jersey and lives in what is essentially Brooklyn but technically Queens. His work can be found in Hobart, Fourteen Hills, OF ZOOS, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
