The Code
By Aaron Crosby, M3
Incessant beeping in this room.
Screw shut your eyes but for that one
glimpse of these jagged cracks of doom.
Electric waves of her crumbling
heart are retraced there in her eyes,
blue and ready. Perched high,
her mask’s
wide maw sets to devour her cries
like carrion. Her chest, she
turns
to unstick the walls to bring her
one last gasp of ice cold relief.
Metal dangles from the finger
of the arbiter, the smooth blade
whose long, cold curve the power holds
to arrest her descent and save
with one small lift before she folds.
She finds her brother at the door.
One puff into her sodden lungs,
and one and one and one and one,
but how many breaths to expunge
the mounds of cancer there entwined?
They speak secret their own language
whose syntax and style long ago
they honed in joyful garden shouts
to hide and seek the passing day.
What she says I cannot transcribe
or understand before he waves his hand.
No more. Attending angels slide
to wrap him in warm embraces
and bear her weight in arms more sure.
Endless beeps still drip like water.
Though stiff her body, they endure.
Deciphered here they seem to say:
Love life outstrips along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment