I Was Hovering Just Below the Hospital Ceiling, Contemplating My Death
       

when I glanced down and saw my body,
the suffering, damaged girl.

My beloved, nowhere to be found,
had died on impact.

Now the ER doctors say I can go either way.

So I hover on the Sistine ceiling
of the ICU, undecided, my dead lover's
hand reaching for me
like God stretched for Adam.

The tubes and machines that keep me
earthbound give way.

We soar above the hospital morgue,
backtrack the highway, our bodies
unbroken, the crash spliced out.

My mother keens beside my hospital bed,
her fingers tangled in my blood-soaked hair,
picking at pieces of windshield.
Holding tight.

Years later I retrace the road
between death and Santa Barbara,
how he cradled my head in his lap as he drove.

How he didn't want to go with me.
How I always got what I wanted.

All my life, such a greedy girl.

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Copyright © 2018 Alexis Rhone Fancher All rights reserved
from Enter Here
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission