this is where I am
this is what I see

dark
like my worst nightmares
where my sight is gone
and images are the blackest blurs

I wake with the piercing gasp
and the thud of my head
on cold linoleum that is engulfing me
where am I?
it's so dark.
I hear nothing.
I reach up
to see where the nightmare ends
it feels like fire
has seared my arm
as I move to end my grasp
five inches above my head.
what the....?
and then shock
pulsates through my body
with memories
a dam has broken
through my eyes
water pours down my bruised face
the crash.
I recall everything with painful precision
the realization
the semi pummeling into us
screaming
my mother's last word,
"No"
as she attempts to be my blanket
against the shards
and the metal
and the pain.
I know innately that she is dead.
I feel her absence in my soul.
my mind suddenly deathly curious,
and in need of amnesia:
where the hell am I?
it's so cold.
I'm wearing a gown,
a hospital gown.
but the linoleum...
as the last pieces
of the macabre puzzle are set in place,
I am in a morgue.
thought to be a corpse.
Panic rushes in my spine
streaming through my nerves
like electrical currents.
I start screaming
but my scratchy whisper
is like a Salem Trial
for no one is listening.
Although the pain is filling my body
I jerk,
making a seizure of noise.
I hear muffled voices,
and my body reacts more violently.
alarm in the voice is evident
the sound of a key
is my resurrection.
my drawer is opened
the mortician gapes
at his live manila folder,
the dam is broken again
and tears are all I see.
he lifts me
like a feather
and holds me while I recover
from my steely grave.

here i sit in my catacomb.
the catacomb of the lives,
our house.
i walked in, my head
dizzy with the smell
of a mother's perfume.
the dam yields,
the water has run dry.
and now there's a hole
this gaping wound.
and i'm so afraid
because that bottle of pills
looks more like my future
than a picket fence.

this is where i am.
this is what i see.