right hand pointing

The vertigo won’t go away. I finally call an ambulance, which only makes it real—the small white room with curtains, and the bed where people die. EKG and blood tests. Tests you have to pass before they let you into heaven. I think about my life as snow falls from the ceiling. False alarm. My diet worked too well, blood pressure pills too strong now for my lesser self. Dropping the dose, I’m returned to the land of the living.

                                                summer over—

                                                flashlight moon

                                                wanders water

Now I keep death on my keyring, along with old lives: sailor, poet, janitor. Masks made of thought, their carousel of selves circles an abyss. I’m not who I think.