what followed
arrested all of us
reality emerging from behind the curtain:
Marie quietly retching,
all of us feeling the same.
and on and on the Speaker spoke
telling us what we had always known
somewhere, somehow,
but never acknowledged
we were reeling before he was done
and afterwards, stunning in our silence
so we sat there,
stupidly,
running into the wolves
a step closer with every word
funneled into our brains
and rolling slowly towards our comprehension,
hence the stunning quiet
as word, word, word dripped
into understanding growing,
knowing finally the truth:
that we ran an unacknowledged race
from predators towards cliffs of certain death.
every word peeled back
more of the great eyelid
and second skin
that was our imagination
and self-deceit,
peeling it back so that we clearly saw
this curtainless reality
and seeing,
braking through a perfect arc,
facing the pack and running again,
away from a future precipice
and towards the chasing jaws,
still running in our minds
and feeling as we left the room
a cold and knowing rain.