I thought I had lost you.
I took that last corner hard,
shook the mind of reason,
but there you are,
clinging on like grind Death
to the trailing edge of this
insane dogfight of an existence.
Now, through the briar patch.
You thought the flat desert,
wide open scrub brush was bad?
Well, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, son.
It gets rough.
It gets painful.
By the time we get through here,
we’ll both be ripped and torn,
shredded clothes and cut to ribbons
by the sharp thorns.
Protect your eyes and throat.
You don’t want to be
another casualty of this pursuit.
ZOOM!
Now we break clear.
Thirty seconds of smooth sailing
and then “BANG!”
We’re hit with another concussive blast
that threatens to shake our vehicle apart.
My head is ringing.
I see you staring, wide eyed past me,
off into the distance.
It takes me a second
to realize we’re falling.
Free fall.
It’s loud.
The rush of air is deafening
and the ground comes up
so quickly.
We don’t really feel the impact.
Then black.
Silence.
Are we dead?
Have we finally done it?
Reached some horrible conclusion
and together entered
the dark underworld?
There is light,
in some direction
that is now forward.
We move without thinking.
No longer feeling our broken bodies.
No longer hot, or cold, or wet, or dry,
just moving,
forward through the darkness.
I do not see you,
but I know that you are there
and the light gets bigger,
and bigger,
and bigger
as we approach it.
It is as big as the Sun
and soon, it envelopes us
and we go from the dark
to the light.
I don’t remember how we got here,
you and I.
Sitting here,
in this little café,
drinking coffee.
We were catching up.
Talking about life
and you were telling me
about your kids
and your job
and your life.
I remember listening,
just happy to be spending time
with an old friend.
At some point,
I remember this quite clearly,
the conversation turned to politics
and the bottom fell out of the world.
Fire from the sky.
HG – 2018
