each second

Somehow the oxygen still seep
Its way into your shriveled cells,
Each haggard breath a year of your life
In seconds.
Your eyes are glassy, unknowning pupils
Tossed amidst the blue of your irises.
Each heart beat pounds like a race horse
Down its final lap,
Erratic, frantic pulsing, one hundred and eighty beats
In each second.
And my hands shake as they brush
Ones, paper-thin and immobile at your side.
And each second
Is like a decade as Time and Death
Fight their age-old struggle
In you.
Why must civilians feel the heat of bombs,
The bone –crushing force of victory
That in seconds
Changes the landscape of your body,
Conforms it to the shape of the earth
Beneath you?
But the warriors have no answers and
My brain skips wildly,
Each neuron-message an overwhelming effort
And in each second
A century roles by and
The drips of the IVs and the blinking lights
Attempt their own conclusions.