Koi fish in my tiny little pond

I watched a woman die today....felt her life dissolve in the palms of my hands as she held on, gripping them reflexively in her pain. I cried like a fool, a fool who thought of life, the world, as dark words on a frail page. Words that had weight beyond measure; more meaning and substance than my dull existence. Her blood slithered down the the front seats made hot and sticky by the summer sun. Precious quicksilver flowed from her body onto the oily grass beneath. I sat vigil with her in the twisted, ruined hulk of her car...watched as the brightness in her eyes turned to shadows, then darkness. My body trembled so violently that I thought my skin had become milk, soft and quavering. I breathed in her final sighs, took them into my body without knowing and my soul clenched in overwhelming sadness. I watched a woman die today and thought,

In all the days
With every breath
Your love comes to me
Winged and unfettered
I am free and heaven-bound

I turned to the paramedic kneeling beside me; her hand as light as breath on my shoulder. She was speaking to me but her words were caught in the slow, sacred movement of time. Her eyes glowed, glistened in the twilight as she gently closed the woman's unseeing ones. Her gaze met mine and she whispered "There, but for the grace of God, go we."