love is an emergency, he's bleeding all over the place,
oh my god, call 911! there's
BLOOD everywhere,
what happened? chaos, panic,
and behind their shocked screams and tearful eyes,
the truth has settled:
he is dead.
gone forever.

(I am speeding through space.
The universe is vast and black and full of stars,
and I am moving so fast, they become stripes of white light.
I pass galaxies and planets and suns and moons,
and though I see them plain as day,
I cannot reach out and touch them,
for they are millions of light years away,
and there is no "plain as day" in this cold vacuum;
there is only night.)

love is a bumpy ambulance ride
while sirens blare outside,
he stirs, and he,
he thought he was dead,
and a man in a green vest
forces him to drink a bottle of activated charcoal.
it is like black sandpaper, grating.
he is in the eye of the storm, or so he feels
just before he passes out.
he is dead.
gone forever.

(I head out towards the infinite dark,
leaving the cosmos and the lit skies behind;
I look back and I can no longer see the world.
Everything is empty and silent,
and I am alone and frozen.
But even though there is nothing left around me,
I can feel that I am still accelerating,
still speeding through space.)

love is a sterile room with white walls
and a painfully hard mattress.
nurses come and go,
and there are plastic tubes in his body.
someone is sitting next to his bed,
holding his hand.
she tenses as his eyelids slowly open,
and she looks at him and he looks at her
and in her eyes there is a flicker of hope
and in his eyes are all the galaxies and planets and suns and moons
and she sees them plain as day,
and that flicker of hope fades:
he is dead.
gone forever.

(Even when the sun was right in front of me,
and vision was engulfed by fire,
there was no "plain as day".
There was only night.)