Thirty Seconds

The shelf fell where I would have been

if I had left the apartment thirty seconds earlier.

Thirty seconds. The distance between

being crushed and walking past,

the distance between being there and not being there,

the distance between the person I was

and the person I almost became.

The books were scattered on the floor,

spines cracked, pages bent. The shelf

was still there too, just horizontal instead

of vertical, just useless now instead of

holding things up. And I stood there

looking at the empty space where I would have been,

the space that should have had my body in it,

and I couldn't feel anything about it.

Not grateful. Not scared. Just aware

of the accident, the randomness of it,

the way the world doesn't care about the timing

of things, the way a shelf falls when it falls

and a person is either there or not there

and there's no reason for it either way.

I was not there. And now I have to live

with knowing how easily I could have been.

How easily I could still be anywhere,

how easily the thing that kills me

could be happening right now,

could be waiting for me to be there

at the exact moment it falls.