It’s better to be there
when the day is slowing down
and the light sudden means
rip off this veil and bleed
or signal the next drone
in white, and check out.
It’s better not simply to imagine
the bleached walls as shorelines,
the antiseptic smell of after-death,
the tin sounds of sounds
moving on carts down halls.
It’s better to see the spider
who escapes the cleansing
frenzy, moving like a dark star
across the corridor’s inverse heaven.
But is it better to be the last one
to hear a human breath,
the trillionth, quadrillionth,
as life itself forgets. Or is it
best to simply imagine after,
to sense that final fuzziness,
heaven, hell, earth and sky,
of this small room,
the antic world outside,
and pretend all’s well,
that the last word is one
of joy, or spoken in amazement?
It’s the asking, then the question,
all the rest we want, desire, love,
a sense of speculation.
Nothing comes back.
Nothing came through.
The eyes open and close.
Darkness is always on the inside,
a room, a brain, and outside again,
moving into the next room.