Step in Time

My chair has broken beneath me

There are no other chairs around

Creaks were clues

Reckless rocking, causation.

One crash.

Pain, humiliation, loneliness, regret, memory, forgetting, unreal, delusion, savior, hurt.

Build up was months in coming:

I knew.

Even when I made him laugh,

I knew.

Even when I said good-bye – so lightly,
I knew.

Even when he held my foot beneath the table as we talked of the world’s problems and he suffered his own sickness

I knew.

But there was always maybe.
What if?

Someday…

But I knew.

-- circa 2002