She and I revolved around Cancer’s moon
like two moon flowers in a perpetual garden
tended very carefully by wide eyed thieves
The cold gasoline between manicured nails
smells that teetered between life and death
in an urgency to say what was on her mind
as I wait for the other shoe to drop heavily
to get to her I had to step on her thoughts
with her eyes open she could not see me
a hummingbird passes with jaundiced eye
a color never seen before on such a bird
when the same expression fits them all
they never cared at all for our daily troubles
making me think of how meaningless it was
to be preoccupied by the mundane things
when there is way too much in life to enjoy
and it made me think of how precious life is
what a waste to have it suddenly drain out
I pressed my palm repeatedly to her breasts
Hoping to hear her moan once in the hot sun
As traffic crawled by along with her dreams
And onlookers gawked in a morbid curiosity
with idiotic whistles over her opened blouse
I remained hunched over her in slow motion
With her blood on my dry-cleaned sleeves
pieces of her brain on my polished shoes
I wanted to kiss her lips like sleeping beauty
a young blonde stranger I had never known
hopes that some magic would light her eyes
and that someday even she would remember
and she would look me up to buy me coffee
on one of my long, lonely and boring nights
like many before her that have touched me
and then way too often for the very last time
so many people have asked if it affects me
and I am unable to give them an answer
that would explain what it feels like at all
the tragedy of seeing them die in my arms
due senseless and absentminded mistakes
in those lapses with too high a price to pay
right in the middle of the number two lane
as the stench of road flares filled my lungs
until I hear the cold beeping backup alarm
of an ambulance that finally arrives on scene
to take over while I nearly faint of exhaustion
and they quickly take her lifeless body away
at emergency the doctor shakes his head
despite my hard fought efforts to revive her
and tells me she was pronounced D.O.A.
and that I already did everything I could
for I was but a machine that kept her alive
I thought of all the plans her parents had
And soon it would be time for notification
but first I would have to change my uniform
and clean off my scuffed badge and shoes
and find words without breaking into tears
of a moment when my hopes were theirs
in that eternity as I knocked on their door

© 2002 Aztec Panther (aka Amor Sabor)