One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise.

Rash

Viviana Abnur

Everything I know about death

I learned the hard way

when I saw you go by on the stretcher

to intensive therapy

I was an atheist like you and I only saw

a slight and strange body

pass at the speed of light

is it that perhaps we live confused

or we are just light and nothing else

because I suddenly knew in an instant

that you were not

in that body

they took you to the Emergency room

like a war trophy

there was a rush for the doctors to arrive

there was a rush to death

for fleeing the territory

minutes before

you asked for a book

minutes before I hugged you and you told me

you are so good

then the power outage in the hospital

the door half open

and I was spying on you and could see

how they surrounded you with candles

still alive

like in a Poe story

someone hugged me and I cried

we lost said the doctor

and I knew death

is in a rush dad

and in the rush it's sloppy

because something was taken forever

I knew it

but something not

in that defeated body

you were not in.

More from Viviana Abnur ↓

• @cruda.luz on Instagram
• Her book, Rash, is available now

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