the ringing dark

2:30 a.m.

the dark is thick as pitch,

and we drift inside it.

Then—

sudden glow, a blade,

sharp cry like glass breaking in silence.

I hear the phone before she does,

its ring like a thread pulled tight.

Her hand rises from sleep,

her voice follows—

and a nurse unspools words

that do not yet land,

as if they could bruise:

unresponsive,

paramedics,

thirty minutes.

The air clamps around throats.

Time folds into a chamber,

ten minutes wide,

where nothing happens

and everything is already happening.

In the hollow between sentences

I feel her—

mother, not yet gone,

but already slipping

into past tense.

The world is leaning,

but has not yet fallen.

We balance on the lip,

breathing the weight of before.

The phone shrieks again—

this time three bruises,

and her cry,

a breaking wave

that carries us

irrevocably into after.