POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

Jolted, drenched, from recurring nightmare
I found you still there, your quiescent
slumbering form against my back.

Guilt-plagued by all I'd said and done
since your close call with death,
I turned and embraced you,

trembling, reliving the hell I'd just left:
the open grave, your coffinless corpse sliced open
with gaping hole where your heart should be

and me, naked, trying in vain to staunch the bleeding,
stuffing flowers into the wound, tons of them
that just kept vanishing into the bottomless red cavern.

Oh please enlighten me - is that horror reality
and this a dream? I am no longer sure, either,
where you and I fit into the mockery

of happy ever after...in sickness and in health
and unconditional love. I've loved you as best I can
through all these long years, through all the traumas

of infant mortality, then threat of widowhood,
to finally emerge in one piece...but only to find myself
now hounded by the sheer terror of terror itself.