Last thoughts before night

I sit and watch the crowds,

an island in the midst of this river

of flesh and blood,

they part around me,

and seamlessly rejoin again

they look as I do,

but I am not like them,

an effigy of a person,

a movie set store front

of painted life where none resides

a shell

filled only with memories

of blood and rubble

a million thoughts are birthed and die around me,

worries, expectations, hopes, dreams and fears,

a whirlwind of emotion,

a storm of which I am the eye,

still,

inside and out

women walk by

children in hand,

and for a second my heart seizes,

feelings already fading

of small hands

so trustingly held within my own

those everyday things

are the hardest to remember,

blurring together into generic moments,

a husbands laugh,

the weight of a sleeping child,

a million little idiosyncrasies that made me smile

now vanishing

no matter how hard I cling to them

and yet those I would forget

are seared,

burned

and etched

into my every waking moment

a flash in the sky,

a roar that still echoes

and three crosses in the dust,

my life vanished

in the blood and rubble

the tape is pulling at my skin,

this corset of tears

it is not a want for death

but a love of a life not allowed

it is not about what comes next

but an escape from what is right now

I stand and breath in

exhale

and I see them,

flashes through the crowd,

they are waiting for me

smiling

the trigger is sweaty in my palm

blood

and rubble