SECOND CHANCES

Shovel full by shovel full, dirt jumped back off the shovel and piled high by the tombstone that marked my new home, and my soul…watched people stand at my grave’s hole, and I found it odd when the preacher said…”soul his rest god.” People walked backwards, back towards their cars, and jumped in back first as that black hearse reversed and backed away…until it reached the church on that sad, solemn, Saturday. As raindrops jumped from the ground to the clouds, and the preacher said aloud “pray us let” and I could not forget the haste with which tears fled single back up my mother’s face, and my sister’s look of hurt as she walked my mother backwards out the church, and I was back in that funeral home. Some unknown man had a tube in my hand and I heard him say its “fluid embalming” and as it exited, my blood came back in. Suddenly, I was once again this hospital bed and my heartbeat said “boooooooooop, baboop, baboop, baboop” and I was alive again and the nurse backed in and said “?today you are how” Every four hours I vomited up the six pills she made me devour in hopes that they killed what’s causing me this pain. My room was filled with flowers and day by day they became less as tests were conducted only after results were told to me. Five days prior to my demise, my arrival was marked by ambulatory sirens and I was back in that ambulance as it swiftly sped steadfastly back to the apartment in which I dwelt and I saw scenes of hell as I was carried on that gurney back through the door and placed back on the floor as paramedics rushed backwards out the door and moments before they responded quick, I regained consciousness and then I was sick.

Suddenly I was healthy and “well he’s” is how my mother told the person on the phone I was doing, and with a “hello” the conversation had begun and then she hung up the phone and then the phone rang. He took me back to the time 379 days ago when the phone rang and I answered it real slow. Prior to that slow “hello” I took a breath, then suddenly it was two weeks ago and I just took a blood test. The needle came backwards out my arm and I rolled my sleeve back down. I walked backwards around the exam chair and sat back in the waiting room with a carefree stare of reflection about how I could not possibly have an affection…infection. I walked backwards out the doctor’s office and sat back in the softness of my Maxima seats, and I drove the streets backwards through time to six months ago, and I ended up back on the doorstep of some girl I really didn’t know. I walked back through the door and my clothes and her clothes both hit the floor and I told her “before this like sex had never I.” Our passionate action had us kissing and I was reminiscing back to the look in her eyes when she smiled and I thought “cool…” then I remembered she said “that need don’t you.” It was a quarter past two and I saw my soul looking back at me and I knew I was acting foolishly. You don’t get second chances at bad romancing and I begged my soul to let me go back to that moment in time when I was a living breathing man, when that unused condom jumped out the trash can and landed back…in my hand.