not here

It’s been a week since I almost died.
Since I climbed back up the bramble hill,
Back out the treetop,
Left the shredded carcass of broken glass
Without a scratch on my body

Only the connection,
Broken.

To call for help
I reach for my phone,
Unlock the screen
That Quietly witnesses, saying
“Miracle.”

That night I wrote:

“A fantail performed the last rites,
“Is there anyone in the car?”
Me. Me that didn’t make it.

I feebly perform a stitched-together human
For indifferent men scratching numbers,

Waiting for the space to finally
Unravel

In the bathtub my hands still tremble,
All of me humming somewhere
Between the landlocked and the departed

I keep poking around my outline,
Leaking out an inky blackness

two handspans wider than usual,
Looking for visible cracks.

I cry, feeling
nothing.

Is this the familiar sound of grief,
that stumbling whoosh
When the ground that holds you is gone?

I wash this body,
Give smiles to those that love me.
I am house-sitting for an absent lodger they like.

I dress this blurry outline carefully,
Like I would clothe a cherished memory.

The sky darkens while I listen to
My heart, still beating, uninterrupted.

kind eyes in one stranger’s face
Dared to actually look at me,
To peer over barricades of protocols
And stare at the abyss
Where a sliver of something
Looks back
“I see you.”
I cannot,
I has wandered away, vacated the premises.

I play music,
But holding myself together
Is like trying to cup too many pearls,
Who lazily scatter at every attempt.

Relief of darkness and silence,
When the outside feels so loud, so crowded.

I am not here.”