Immobilized, strangled by panic, I claw
myself awake, my own voiceless scream
echoing,
                I’m not dead yet!
                My brain is still working!

For days, I can’t drain off my foreboding.  Soon,
it will be the tenth anniversary of 9/11,
and my son’s wedding in New York City.  Fear
slithers along the implications of the dream:

             Our plane goes down in flames.
             Subway tunnels turn black, smoke-filled.
             Our hotel collapses, story by story.
             I’m buried alive, entombed 
             with my desperate plea.  Then,

sudden enlightenment, set loose by a different vision:
my mom, sedated, neatly tucked into her deathbed.  Me, 
seated next to her, waiting.  It’s too late to ask her 
if she is afraid.  Not too late to enter my dreams now

and answer that question with ghostly bitterness.
This was her final reality, her agony.
             This was how it ended.