Most of our time is spent dead,
or not yet born.
An endless nothing heaped
atop more nothing.
Like being the first person
in the history of the world
on the timeline God abandoned.

Until one day you
feel someone approaching
glance a smile so small
it’s almost not there,
and the whole universe bulges and cracks.

A warm needle
plunged through an aging ghost,
shuddering breathless
in a crumbling foundation
of foxglove and mid-morning traffic.