To Picture Him Faceless Poem by Patti Masterman

I try to imagine you crawling there on the support beam,
Because I can't stand imagining you later on:
High in the cold attic, surrounded by night noises,
Dawn perhaps yet two hours of intense dreaming away.
Everyone else in the universe unconscious or unavailable
And you positioning yourself carefully, in your handmade noose.

Praying for a clean break, but with no certainty;
Nothing is absolute here- except-
In a moment or an hour, I know you will be dangling,
Either in stillness or in rocking spasms,
At or near the bottom of the attic.

I can't help wondering if your joints grew stiff
Crouching there for too long,
In the eery darkness before daylight arrives,
Or if you feared the coming day even worse than the one about to leave
Or if you cursed your thoughtful hesitation as just another weakness and failure.
Did the sock hat also hide your swollen eyes from the world,
As well as prevent your discoverer from extra trauma.

Did you just slip over in a sloppy accident,
Growing sleepy in the cooled, dim air,
And found it was too late to change your mind then?
Guess I'll never know the answer to that one
Or if I slept or woke at that instant.

How can the same moment define both of us?
For in you was the emptiness of unfinished life, draining away,
How strange that I never saw that blankness coming,
Never saw warning of it in words or actions,
Not until it covered over your entire history,
Like a black mold that eats the faces off in old photo albums.