Nude Kevin Love has Seen the End Times

He rides on the distant horizon.

Death comes for us all, but Kevin Love can see the dust clouds whipped up as Death approaches this place that he has almost surely visited before. All trace of humanity is gone, save for Love. With no clothes, the sand rips away at his sunburnt skin. Raw, and dribbling his basketball, Love stands in the middle of a wasteland, a living ruin of a once great age.

Love cannot hear or taste the End, but it is always closer. The faint whistle of a freight train grows louder, pestilence in tow. Each step, each dribble, Love's blood grows colder under his baking skin.

A hollow steel pole, no better or worse than the best friend he ever had, is all that remains. In time Love has come to resemble the pole much more than the ball he carries with him. A reminder, perhaps, of the days of plenty gone by, and the frail future riding his way.

The sky rips itself on the great mountains, the spine of a universal fossil.

In a quiet moment, quieter than all the other quiet moments, Love speaks. "I am naked like you, the pole."

The words bounce off the uncompromising metal and evaporate. Love looks once more at the horizon. It does not matter how far away Death is, it only matters that Death is coming. Once it starts, it begins to end. Movement no matter how slow is too fast. There is no hope in Love, only in numbing the despair.

Death is coming. Death is always coming.

[ESPN]