The Poet and the Parrot’s Whispered Apocalypse

The Poet awoke to a fractured dawn. Sunlight poured in from a thousand jagged cracks in the sky, refracting through invisible prisms and painting the air in colors unnamed. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, though no amount of rubbing could wash away the vision of the world as it had become: a kaleidoscope of incoherence, dreams bleeding into reality with no apology.

On his bedside table sat a tangerine teacup. The tea within it had gone cold at least three lifetimes ago, and the tiny umbrella floating on the surface now resembled a tragic jellyfish. The Poet drank from it anyway. He needed the taste of nostalgia, even if it was stale.

As he staggered to the window, the Parrot on the perch greeted him with a grin that looked far too human. It had once been a bird of paradise, feathered in gold and sapphire. Now, its feathers were a series of newspaper clippings pasted together with words in languages never invented. Its eyes glimmered like black pearls dropped into an abyss.

“Today is the day,” croaked the Parrot, in a voice that could’ve belonged to a prophet, a liar, or both.

The Poet sighed. He was used to this refrain.

“The day for what?” he muttered, brushing dust from the windowsill. Beyond the window, streets folded and unfolded themselves like paper origami in a ceaseless ballet. Buildings leapt to their feet, danced in perfect circles, then fell over, laughing at their own clumsiness. “Another apocalypse? You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“This time it’s true,” the Parrot assured him. It fluttered to the windowsill, balancing on one leg like a one-winged ballerina. “The sky broke last night. Didn’t you notice? Apocalypse is scheduled for noon.”

The Poet looked at the sky again. Those jagged cracks were unmistakable, like the glass of a shattered snow globe. But he didn’t feel like dying today. He had poems unwritten and thoughts still waiting to become metaphors.

“I’m not ready for the end of the world,” he said. “I haven’t finished my great work yet.”

“Poetry will not stop the sun from falling,” the Parrot declared solemnly.

“I disagree.” The Poet lifted his notebook from the cluttered table. Its cover was worn, its pages filled with ink stains and half-formed stanzas. He flipped through it, searching for the right combination of words to hold back the inevitable.

A Clown Parade of Epiphanies

The streets were chaos — more so than usual. Clowns with too many limbs juggled flaming swords while acrobats dangled from ropes that seemed to descend from the heavens themselves. They performed to an audience of shadows, all clapping politely with hands that dissolved into smoke. A brass band played a song in reverse, and as each note unraveled, a ripple of unreality spread through the world.

“This is a celebration,” said the Parrot, hopping from the Poet’s shoulder to the rim of a nearby fountain. “They know the end is near. So they dance.”

“They’re mad,” the Poet replied, though there was something tempting in their madness. He’d never written a poem about dancing shadows or backward music. “I should be writing this down.”

“No time,” squawked the Parrot. “Noon is coming. Faster than you think.”

And indeed, the sun — fractured and trembling — had begun its descent. It wobbled across the sky like a lopsided yolk, dripping threads of fire.

“Maybe it’s not the end,” the Poet reasoned, desperate. “Maybe it’s just the sun’s turn to die.”

“And what do you think comes after that?” asked the Parrot. “Darkness, Poet. Total and unforgiving.”

The Prophet of the Mirror City

On the edge of the square, a figure emerged, dressed in a robe made of mirrors. The robe reflected every broken fragment of the world around him: shattered clouds, warped streets, and the frenzied clowns who now danced to a dirge. The figure’s face, however, was blank — smooth as an egg.

“Prophet,” the Parrot whispered with uncharacteristic reverence.

The Prophet raised a hand, and the world seemed to still. Even the wind, which had been howling like a homesick wolf, fell silent.

“You are the Poet,” said the Prophet, though no lips moved. His voice came from the air itself, woven from the screams of dying constellations.

“Yes,” said the Poet. “I am.”

“Then you are also the Key. And the Curse. And the Last Hope.”

“I don’t want to be any of those things,” the Poet muttered.

“Want has no place here.” The Prophet pointed toward the sun. “It will fall. Unless.”

The Poet’s heart stuttered. “Unless what?”

“Unless you write the Poem.”

“What poem?”

The Prophet’s mirrored robe shimmered. Each reflection held a different version of the Poet’s life — some beautiful, some hideous, all equally unbearable.

“The poem that holds the world together. You were born with it already written in your bones.”

The Poet clenched his fists. His notebook felt like dead weight in his hands.

“I can’t save the world,” he said. “I’m just a poet. I can barely save myself.”

The Prophet gave no reply. He simply vanished, leaving behind nothing but a single mirrored feather.

The Poem Unwritten

The Poet sat on the fountain’s edge, watching the world unravel around him. Clowns dissolved into vapor. Streets curled into themselves, becoming Möbius strips of despair. The Parrot perched nearby, humming an apocalyptic lullaby.

“I can’t do it,” the Poet whispered.

“Why not?” asked the Parrot.

“Because the words are wrong. They’re always wrong.”

“They’re only wrong until you speak them.”

He looked up at the sky. The sun was inches from the horizon, ready to crush everything beneath its weight.

He opened his notebook. The pages were empty, though he could have sworn it had been filled just moments ago. His hands trembled. Ink spilled from his pen like blood.

“What do I even write?”

The Parrot tilted its head. Its newspaper-feathers rustled with phantom words. “Write what you see.”

The Poem Found

So he did.

He wrote about the fractured sky, the way its cracks held memories of every lost star. He wrote about clowns who juggled swords and sadness, and shadows that clapped even as they faded into nonexistence. He wrote about mirror prophets and whispered apocalypses.

And as he wrote, the world began to shift. The streets straightened. The sun paused its descent, uncertain. Even the wind dared to breathe again.

“More,” urged the Parrot.

The Poet wrote about himself — about fear, doubt, and the unbearable weight of words. He wrote about the impossibility of saving a world that was never whole to begin with. And as ink met paper, something miraculous happened.

The cracks in the sky sealed themselves. The sun stopped trembling. Shadows became solid, clowns became human, and the brass band finally played its song in the right direction.

The world exhaled.

The Poet and the Parrot

It was over. Or maybe it had just begun. The Poet couldn’t tell anymore. He looked at the Parrot, whose feathers had returned to gold and sapphire.

“You saved it,” the bird said, with a hint of surprise.

“Did I?”

“You did.”

The Poet closed his notebook. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever write something that powerful again.”

The Parrot cackled. “Nonsense. The world is always on the brink of ending. You’ll have plenty of practice.”

They both laughed, and the sky — at last — was whole.