CLAIRE GIROUX

THE MOMENT BEFORE WAKING

She wrote on a post-it note:
"This is it,
The moment when all our sadness plays
like a tinny piano.
This is it,
The moment when you inhale
before you begin to break."
Flowers have a way of dying
no matter how perennial the experts say they are.

"This is it,
The moment our bodies rise from biblical cells
And gain a span of integrity before retreating."
She was crying one night
"My heart is beating my body apart,"
She said,
"This is it isn't it? The moment when we KNOW?"

"This is it," she says,
"the moment just before we wake from dreams,
When our heads begin to realize where we truly are
And our bodies are still paralyzed in the sheets."
She used to keep a tally of all the disasters she'd heard of.
Of all the dead people she knew.
"A list for God, to remind him of everything he's ever done,
Of everyone he's ever taken away too soon."