I watched the oldest woman....
posted by jeremy on December 13, 2007
& I wondered if she was dancing her last hours.....
As I wonder my own inevitable check-out move so often these days....
That moment where you find out what this all might not be.
She was as cracked as car-wreck glass... She was wizened.
She was beautiful. Her mortality took my breath away.
And looking at her, her eyes turned up and all that wasted flesh...
All I could think about was the final loneliness of it.....The tone of that EMS tech as he pushed her gurney into the ambulance.... The implied everyday-ness of her demise....
How it just is going to come down on us all, in all its terrible lonely beauty.
Kill me early, I thought, should I ever forget this.
And kill me even quicker if I fear death oh so much that I dont do what I know needs to be done.... If I ever turn from those things, these things, these cusp that frighten me.
O baby, please kill me dead should I ever turn away.