It was warm,
gentle,
it definitely was not raining.
I see the picture
in my head
and feel the morning breeze
on my skin
too well,
and that woman fills my memory,
that woman keeps coming back
like a discordant note.
Her face came out in a spring dawn,
but it wasn't her time,
didn't seem to be.
Her time was
dark and cold,
a reminder
of a place
where pain was normal
and speech was lost.
Her eyes stared through
my own,
her mouth opened as if to say something to me
and her arm stretched forward.
I thought,
no I KNEW,
her flesh was rotting.
I held my breath.
it was bursting,
ready to explode into the sky
shatter into crystals.
She floated down the pavement--
halfway between an apparition
and a dream.
But I knew my heart was open
and waiting for the answer to the question
standing in front of me.
Where did you come from,
the future or the past? I shouted.
She seemed to jump a distance,
her face so close to mine.
Her eyes carried a blaze,
a craze
I had to know was from her present.
Wrapped in the gap of time,
her skin blistering
and festering by every second,
she touched my face
with her fingertips
and sent a shock
of electricity
running through me.
And I was not
on that narrow path anymore.
Bright,
berserk images
ripped through my brain,
my eyes pulsing
with the vividness
of them.
The woman was neither
old or young
up close.
She was an enigma of distance
and space
and her skin
her pores,
opened like flowers.
Her blood flowed
with my tears
and I knew she was dying
to show me the truth
of my life.
The sum of my existence
was a nuclear blast
of catastrophic intensity and heat.
I saw the world stretched out in front of me,
many people with the same
rotten skin
and despairing souls
and I was amongst them.
Was she me?
Was I her?
My eyes opened to the story
unfolding
and I understood
why she was there
on this street
at this minute,
instead of the darkness,
the despair,
she crawled out of.
I saw her smile.
I saw her tears roll down her
fading face
and I wanted to embrace her
but I couldn't wrap my arms around smoke.
"Now you see?"
I heard her whisper as she evaporated into the sky.
"Now I know."
I assured her.
And I turned away from that street,
from that corner,
and began a new direction
that may or may not
have taken me into a new future.
