The Gunshots.

I remember the rain, pounding on the roof like slow, steady gunshots.

I can remember your screams, the fear, yet the concentration.

Saving you… I realize now, would never have been possible.

 

7 AM I got the phone call, the pills were already swallowed.

Just a matter of minutes, before your heart may stop beating.

Panic is a sharp feeling, like sticking the sharp end of a knife in your gut.

 

I felt it then, and I feel it each and every day I think of That Night.

The burning, the place where the knife strikes… it never stops.

It aches, for eternity. Each day, it aches for you.

 

I got to your house on time, but your door would not open.

You had locked yourself inside, to keep out me, and the demons.

I struggled to hold the phone in my hands, as I dialed the numbers.

 

Can you believe it, that they saved your life that night?

But those weeks in the hospital, they turned you into someone else.

I tried to call you for days, months after… but all I got was the machine.

 

I saw you once, about a month ago.

You smile now, but still you never look my way.

To me you’re still the same, walking zombie.

 

I lay awake almost every night staring at your picture.

The hands on the clock cut the scars into my arms, unable to heal me.

And still every night, I hear them. Your screams

 

And the gunshots.

 

Reviews

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

This poem is a major accomplishment. I especially liked the idea of how this person's body lived, but the person actually died. When all of the things that make our personality and creates who we are is taken away...there is indeed nothing left but a shell of a stranger. I like how you bridged the beginning and the end...and made a complete circle with the manipulation of time. Bravo.