The carpet is piercing my back.
Its many fibers jutting out
like a thousand needles, all pushing into
my spine. My palm is on my mouth
and I am sucking the air out.
Leaving behind a vacuum.
Darkness.
I can hear an old woman
on a bed above me
doing the same. She sharply sucks
on air.
I feel the fangs piercing into
her palm; the many tubes sprouting from
her body like entangled snakes.
The old woman
is groaning. They cannot hear her speak.
She wants to wake up,
and peel the white mask from her
eyes. Tell the people crying around her to
shut up.
I am looking out the window
and I can see her face in the sky. But I am waiting,
for any second now, the heavens will part, and will
refuse her entrance. Death will realize it picked up the
wrong person. I am waiting.
Why do I still see
her face in the clouds shrinking, fading?
Why her, when it is I who is dying?