One Sided Goodbyes Poem by Patti Masterman

We passed through the double doors
of the mortuary, and in that brief flash-
of her face going by- saw all the uncertainty,
the dread, of my own face, and of others going in;
a dreading of what we knew must be within,
a fear of what's known, but also of the unknown,
the new alien world where everything's been upended
even as they're turning over new soil
to prepare a different kind of place,
we remember that this world
never turned to our dreams.

Nothing can be again what it was once,
amid the feeling that we are so fragile now,
in our dangerous new knowledge,
ready at any moment to break apart-
shatter into a million disjointed fragments-
like the thinnest tea cup upon the shelf,
and even the earth itself is quaking under us
(And where now are the sweating, bellowing preachers
always crying for repentance, speaking of stones being rolled away?)

There are no miracles left here for us,
no lightning bolts and thunder
no burning comets, marking a spot high above in the heavens,
no signs, no rainbows, no doves-
and everything keeps looking so completely normal,
as we keep on making our one-sided goodbyes.