One Day (it will happen)
One Day
One day soon, it will happen.
You will wake up
in the middle of the night,
or wipe your eyes
in the morning before
the alarm has sounded.
You will not be thinking
of the shower,
or the day ahead of you,
the struggle as it is referred
to in the Leonard Cohen song.
Your feet will slip into the slippers
and you will walk out of your bed
and down the hallway,
unless you are sleeping on a couch -
someone else's,
someone who was kind enough
to put you up for the night.
You will remember the time
when you should have
or almost did but didn't.
The birds will still sing in the morning,
and the butterflies will gather their nectar.
The sun will peek through
the blinds or the curtains,
whatever window adorations
there are in the place in which you are at
when this happens to you.
Somehow the world keeps on turning
and the morning newscasters
will look into the cameras
and tell you about things that
are happening someplace else,
a place you may or may not have heard of.
The stories still go on and weddings happen,
children are graduating school
and becoming adults
and there are others who will bury their dead.
Church bells ring
and traffic lights turn green
and then yellow and then red.
You will still be walking down that hallway,
in a house that you may or may not be happy in.
One day it will happen to you,
the pains may start at the base of your spine
or the back of your head
or maybe in that hollow cavity
where your heart is supposed to be.
You will reach up for it,
like a swimmer braving
the waters when they have lost their footing.
But that is ridiculous because no one swims
with their feet alone. Maybe like the spelunker
who momentarily looses her grip
on the rope and then slips rapidly down
before the pegs that were placed into the rock,
jolts her to an abrupt halt.
You will reach an empty hallway,
even if you are on your host's couch,
they have already left you, alone,
to care for the plants which are already dying,
to kick up the dust that has gathered on the floor
and which will settle on the shelves of books
you have glanced at but will never read.
Maybe before you slip onto he floor -
carpeted or wooded or perhaps tile -
I'll leave this to your imagination now -
you will notice the spots on the ceiling
that look like they might be slivers of mica.
But to you they will appear to be diamonds -
like that ring he gave you before he beat
the shit out of you every day, or that ring
that you never received but always dreamed about.
Who knows.
One day you will fall against the floor
and then into that box that will enter a furnace
or be forced to carry several feet of dirt above it
that was prepared for you long before
you decided to get out of bed that morning.
The day will go on like it usually does,
the doves will sing and
the cars will slither by your window.
Maybe there will be a light,
like that lamp you forgot to turn off
the night before you devoured that bottle
of merlot or like the flames that
sputter from that burner you left on,
that candle you neglected to extinguish.
Imagine the plane,
blazing through the night
and a small pod falling from it.
The mushroom cloud will look so beautiful
before you close your eyes,
and your hands will reach out to touch it,
reach out for the air you are inhaling one last time,
reaching out to catch that pill
that has escaped your grasp.
Your brown hair and scalp,
seeping red once you have made
that impact on the floor
that may be wood or carpeted or even tile