The Day God Disappeared

    You’re here.
    The day sunny and windless – rare during the winter.
    Carrion birds stalk lower and lower, suddenly sail up, then
    scroll their way down, finally shooting back up carrying
    their cemetery.
    You’re here.
    But you’re not sure why. Through some fault of yours?
    Who is so angry with you that they’d do this?
    Is it something you failed to do?
    Maybe, because of all the other things you did but were not
    caught?
    Nevertheless, you are here.
    And your throat constricts, then reverses itself
    from a stench that chokes as you awaken to glide
    from sleep into reality inside what remains of your domicile
    with walls the color of ash.
    You settle inside a ghostly vision. Try to sort your thoughts,
    but your memory screams within its cage
Hunched forward at a round table.
To your right a man who killed four women
after climbing through their second story windows
then stomping them with his climbing spikes.
To your left a man with two dull blue teardrops
below his right eye.
Tomorrow each will pass the other in silence.
Gaze through. Walk as if not there.
It’s a hard lesson learned – that invisible line you cannot cross.
Not a gate. Nor a fence. Nor a wall.
But a two-foot demarcation inside which you are required
to turn away – look down, hands rigid at your sides, palms exposed.
Your place is away and away from.
What you do not know, but will learn is
your decisions and choices have vanished.
From this point forward, you cannot make
an independent decision about where,
or for how long you can sleep,
where your drinking water comes from,
where, or for how long, you can sit.
Someone else decides for you.
Your decision-making ability peeled away –
food, amount, availability, quality,
When to eat, where to eat.
Someone else decides for you.
Nor can you decide on the temperature or
quality of the air you breathe. Nor your clothes,
their cleanliness, not even when and with whom
you shower. You can no longer decide whether
to open a door, to close a door,
to stand beside a door, to pass through a door.
Someone else decides for you.
You no longer decide how much reading light to have.
Nor when that light will be dimmed or turned off.
Not your toothpaste. Not your toothbrush.
Someone else’s decision.
Basic medical care. Not today.
A doctor, unable to speak English or Spanish,
might be here on Tuesday. Maybe, if he is not somewhere else.
Pray you do not have any illness requiring medicine not on the formulary.
If so, you are shit out of luck.
Pray there’s someone to talk with
There isn’t.
Pretend you’re not here, but you are.
Someone else has made that decision for you.