We heard the whispers for days.
Itchy little fiddles of the seismograph’s needle. Minor but unsettling.
We all became aware of a subtle droning in the edges of our hearing, constant enough to be a bother but not quite present enough to be a concern.  I guess we collectively chose not to discuss the noise, all secretly worried that our caffeine intake and lack of sleep finally took their toll on our sensory reliability.
When the moaning started, so dissolved our fear of impropriety. You’d hear conversations in the BART, between students on the campus green.  Like nothing I’ve ever heard before was a common remark.  Like nothing I’ve ever felt.
We knew we were staring down an invisible predator.  She was stalking us, hiding in our blind spots and our nonchalance.  We understood her grandiosity, our own insignificance.  The knowledge ran through our blood and touched that small, ancient part of us that remains connected to nature despite all our efforts to reject it.  We felt animal. We felt aware.
For a few days, passions flared.  Love, vitriol, lust, spite-- the city throbbed, an aurora of emotion painted across the sky. I remember kissing you for the first time in the cafeteria, your mouth tasting of underbaked french fries and urgency. 
The next morning, the earth shrugged. 
The ground undulated beneath our feet and we nodded to each other.  This is it. Bottom’s up.
I held your hand and stared at the sun as the world began to fall apart.