Challenging Poetry

the day before

on the day before my world died,
the sun rose and we saw it, together—
our breaths rising and falling as one.
an ordinary day.
we danced the morning ritual,
ducking around each other
in habitual movements.

later, I was glad
that we kissed goodbye
before we left for our separate days.

we reached out through the air
as we always did—
at odd moments,
and in the evening,
before we made our separate way home,
you texted me your love again.

and we ate together,
and laughed,
and watched the sun catch fire
over the hills, and kissed again
long and lingering,
and slept.

you were cold when I woke—
alone, and as I wept your loss,
I tried to remember some hint,
some premonition that we had felt
some inkling that an ordinary day
would be our last.
but there was nothing—
just your absence
and the memory
of an ordinary day.

This is not something that came from my own experience--but as I think about death (and apparently I think about it a lot, otherwise it wouldn't be so much a part of my writing) I think about how sometimes there is no warning. I'm not sure what's worse, the shock of not knowing or the long and lingering illnesses that are another way to die. But, when I started thinking about a penultimate day, this is what happened.