The Decision

Dark morning, frost heavy,
She woke, heart beating hard and fast,
having dreamt of death,
Yet not her own, but that of a child, not yet born,
Its spirit soft and loved, now returned to a breath,
Breathed in, and not yet breathed out.

Cold breath, scarf warming her
she found ice scratched purposefully
from the windscreen of her car,
Scraped away by a benevolent friend unknown, afar?
The sense of the soft shavings of snow
relieved the heavy weight
of her redundant files and still unmade decision,
And powdery confetti blew away on the subtle breeze.

The photos of her that night never came out,
The black dress a hole in the scene,
a shadow in the wings of the stage.
And all morning cars and people took her place in line,
One gone, one replaced, her role substituted.

And as she drove back,
the crack she had been peering through eagerly
widened and strengthened its grip on her reality,
A fatality of a dream dreamt too long, and too deeply.