Velocity

by Ann
(California)

In the few seconds it takes
a heart to go from thump to flutter to still,
a single breath to catch, hold, dissolve,
the echo of an unanswered ring to fade,
my steep rushing descent from
lush to sere,
here to gone,
both to one,
is complete.

And after that careening drop,
the crash and crush and shock,
a dreary hopeless waiting starts.
For the news that this is not real, not true.
Wrong house, wrong body, wrong urn.
For you to call and say:
okay, enough, too much, I'm back.
Or even an outlandish tale of kidnapping
amnesia, a miraculous rescue.
For Superman to reverse our spin.
For that brief mistaken moment
to be unhappened by love's imperative.

We'd play it down, and not tempt fate;
no ringing joyous cry, no exuberant embrace.
We'd simply rise, and
from our knees and hands
we'd brush the gritty dust.
We'd smile gently at each other,
and you'd lay your now warm palm
on my now dry cheek, just so.
Then we'd shake our heads in relief,
in grateful disbelief,
at close calls and narrow escapes,
at grace.

In a hundred wishful moments a day I think:
This, all this, has surely gone on long enough
for a reprieve, a correction,
an earned return to life before.
And even before that impatient twitch has registered,
I see again the unwavering road ahead,
and the steady march
of happened and finished,
and over and done,
of ashes to ashes,
and gone, gone,
oh, forever and always gone,
to the vanishing point and beyond.