After the Accident
Brandon Cook
What she was she is no longer
And yet she is not gone
Though not the same, certainly,
It's hard to name or say what makes it so,
When subtle changes re-arrange a personality
What is a self, exactly?
What can go? What must remain?
There is joy and there is loss, like gold and dross:
As we attempt to grasp in hands which once knew how to hold her
We gasp at the cost
And the risk we all take in inhabiting human frames
Altered as she is, it feels an end
Our hearts quake
Our own bodies begin to shake
But so they do when we put out to sea
Or gape at beauty:
As seeing a seabird on perfect wings,
So we breathe
We breathe and hold and let it go
Like letting ourselves into the autumn sea
Like swans washed out by too much morning light
Like trees, holding ourselves imperceptibly
Or fog on the mountains, the sun slowly burning through us,
Until we see
That we can only do this together
That is the gift of broken things
It takes many hands holding each other to make things whole
And though what was is gone
We are here, and we are with her, still
We hold her, come night or dawn
As we walk out
From the lonely forests of our solitary ways
Into this new clearing space
Reality takes on a different shape
And we marvel at the beauty of all these faces around us
Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers
Wondering why, like hermits, we lived so many years
So very far from one another