If You Knew by Ellen Bass What if you knew youd be the - TopicsExpress

If You Knew by Ellen Bass What if you knew youd be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch that palm, brush your fingertips along the life lines crease. When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too slowly through the airport, when the car in front of me doesnt signal, when the clerk at the pharmacy wont say Thank you, I dont remember theyre going to die. A friend told me shed been with her aunt. Theyd just had lunch and the waiter, a young gay man with plum black eyes, joked as he served the coffee, kissed her aunts powdered cheek when they left. Then they walked half a block and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk. How close does the dragons spume have to come? How wide does the crack in heaven have to split? What would people look like if we could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time?