“In Event of Emergency”

Staff Writer

11 minutes ago

1 min read

In a strange city, I’m given

the news under the airport’s salt-white lights.

The departures change above me: Newark, Denver.

While a voice calls final boarding, I turn the words stupid

in my mouth: Dingus David,

Dead Dave, David dead. Grief conjugates

in me in irregular infinities: a hallway at night,

a wet match, the dead batteries we keep.

Everywhere, the world rehearses disaster:

the red EXIT burning above a door,

the oxygen masks sleeping in the ceiling,

sirens stitching the avenues shut.

This is the sum of what I know. We are each

a temporary vessel for what cannot stay.

The heart, the house, the plane—small machines

jettisoning us toward home through the dark.

Afterward, things I dream have teeth: the house,

the moon lowering itself into the reservoir,

the dentist’s lamp blooming over an empty field,

my mother young and all in white. David,

standing in an airport with snow on his shoulders,

or married, or lost, or buying oranges, passing me

without recognition through a city neither

of us has seen. At the doorway saying, It’s late, I’m

tired, let’s go to bed.