it is a strange, strange thing,
knowing you are about to die.
there are 45 seconds until the end of the world—
or rather, the end of the world as you know it.
something ticks away beneath your skin,
keeps perfect time with the dwindling seconds.
you forget if you are holding the bomb
or if you have become it:
veins threaded with coloured wires,
organs filled with plasticine.
either way, it hardly matters.
you will be indistinguishable from one another soon enough.
you are 18 years old and you are never getting older.
at home in your closet is a suit for prom,
still in the garment bag you brought it home in.
you would never have graduated from this place,
but surely you would have graduated from somewhere.
you will never do that, now, either.
you have always been a disaster waiting to happen.
then you were just angry.
things forged in fires tend to find their way
back to the tongue of the flame,
and you are no different.
you found who you were in the still smoking rubble,
the aftermath of an explosion,
so perhaps this too was inevitable.
that cigarette between her lips is
the final nail in your coffin,
hammered into place with the butt
of the gun she stole from you.
all those stifling fears and squandered opportunities burned away,
raw power and strength taking their place in
the glorious rebirth of veronica sawyer,
and all of it directed at you.
if the bomb doesn’t kill you, the irony will.
you are jesus on the cross,
arms spread wide and face turned up towards god.
he asked for strength or guidance and you,
you sneer in the face of divine retribution,
squint at the sun and consider this a final challenge.
this is the closest you have felt to
your mother in a very long time.
at the last possible second,
on the most useless of impulses,
this is going to be bright.
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