Allegedly

Author: Todd Matson

Looking through the glass

was like watching a silent

movie in slow motion.

It’s all a blur now.

Was I seeing in color

or in black and white?

Blood is always red, right?

How many times did they

use the defibrillator?

We can’t find a heartbeat.

Those were the first and

last words of the doctor.

I’m sorry. His last words

left his lips in slow motion:

I’m. sorry. for. your. loss.

As he walked off my whole

world faded to black. The End

flashed before my eyes.

Like a movie cut short by the

credits rolling up the screen,

her life passed before my eyes.

Is seeing believing or is

it the other way around?

Isn’t The End just hearsay?

Is anyone ever truly lost?

Why is it that now when I

shut my eyes I see her in color?

Hasn’t she engraved herself in

the neuropathways of my brain?

Hasn’t she become part of me?

She allegedly died in the ICU.

She allegedly left me to live

on without her. Allegedly.

Todd Matson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in North Carolina, United States.  His poetry has been published in Feminine Collective, San Antonio Review, The Brussels Review, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.  He has also written lyrics for songs recorded by several contemporary Christian music artists.