If You Knew
by Ellen Bass
What if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch that palm
or press your fingertips into the crease of a life line.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too slowly through the
airport, when the car in front of me doesn't signal, when the clerk at
the pharmacy won't say thank you, I don't remember they're going to die.
A friend told me she'd been with her aunt. They'd just had lunch and
the waiter, a young gay man with plum black eyes joked as he served
the coffee, kissed her aunt's powdered cheek when they left. Then
they walked half a block and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon's spume have to come? How wide does
the crack in heaven have to split? What would people look like if we
could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
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