Sneaks up like a VC assassin
quick, invisible, deadly
the knife slides into your ribs
while you are thinking far away.

A sharp, sudden pain
and then sudden falling away
into a world of hurt.

Emptiness floods your body,
frozen and stuttering
in incertitude.

Ice enters your stunned heart.

It lasts a second, a minute,
an hour, a day a week, a year.

For that interval you gasp
with the hopelessness of life.

You do not want to die,
you only want to feel nothing,
to escape into nothingness.

And then it departs suddenly
and the earth returns to view.

Birds sing and women are beautiful,
the sun winks and you are saved.

Until the next time when
the unseen blade again finds
your soul and chaos blinds
you to life.