She checks the expiration dates again, the way she does every Sunday, turning each can a quarter-turn so the labels all face the same direction on the steel shelf. Beans. Peaches. A soup I don't recognize. She has enough here to outlast the end of everything, and she moves through it like a librarian shushing a room that only holds her.
I remember being afraid of endings too. I built smaller versions: locked doors, saved money, a spare key hidden where no one would think to look. I understand her. I would tell her, if she could hear the cold spot she keeps walking through and calling a draft, that the air is fine down here. The world upstairs is fine. The disaster she is so carefully outrunning is not the one that gets you.
She has stocked flashlights, batteries, a hand-crank radio, a whole wall against the dark. But she has not once, in all these Sundays, sat down here with anyone. The second cot is still in its plastic. She keeps the place ready for people she is sure will come running to her, and never once picks up the phone while the phones still work.
The dehumidifier hums. She hums with it, off-key, unaware she is doing it, alive in a way she would find embarrassing if she noticed. That sound is the whole thing. That is the treasure she is guarding without knowing she owns it.
Go up, love. Let the cans keep facing forward without you. Somebody at that number you never dial would answer on the first ring, and their voice would be warm, and you would be so bored together, and it would be everything.