she and me

What if I never made it home tonight?
If our conversation,
you and I on the phone,
was not truly happening at all
only me thinking I'm still alive
when really, there's a cold corpse somewhere
lying beside a gray asphalt river
slicked with dark stains, littered
with glittering shards of broken glass
the carcass of a cat that I had failed to miss
and my car among others nearby
torn twisted rumpled from the rear and scrunched
like an old accordion playing.
Unbelievable, almost humorous.

Poor cat,
entrails spilled like so many pomegranate seeds
and mixed with mine, both sticky and stringy
and the same
dizzying lights of blue and red
and voices, so many voices
moored to the sea of cool existence.

And me, slowly meandering
fading, drifting away.
It could be lovely.

Imagine all the beautiful things
melded together into one overwhelming
experience: glory, shame
the things that finally make us human
after all
and beyond that until there's nothing.

Nothing but a woman emerging
bared all to the flesh and she cradles
nothing but the calm cool air.
She is me and she is happy.

Because all her realities
Have become shadows
And all her shadows
Have become reality
and for the first time,
there is nothing but her true self.
Obliquely the inky darkness
will become even this image of her
as she swallows herself, consumes herself
is once and for all permitted
to engorge on that forbidden pleasure:

she is the deer
she is the wolf.
The wolf devours that which is weak
to strengthen in the deer
that which is strong,
In turn sustaining the wolf,
For the wolf is stronger yet than the deer.
And so a cycle ends for a new one
to begin.

Thus I am she, and I am happy.