Oddly Alive

Dreamed I couldn’t get out, couldn't utter

a word. Reduced to a sputtering stutter.

Everything blocked: no way to get past.

My mother dreamed something like this as she crept toward her last.

She was sitting alone on a bench at a bus-stop and couldn't get up.

No longer half-full or half-empty: no cup.

No bus would arrive.

Emblem of how at the end she felt oddly alive.

.