Career Ender

My death came as news
for which I wasn't ready.
Who ever is?
How can one be?

It was more of a revelation
than a shock to the system.
A lot of things suddenly made sense:

The feeling of transparency;
the steady loss of friends;
declining luck with women;
an indestructible liver;
the turkey vulture
I'd seen previously that day
that flew off before I could avenge
the rabbit it was eviscerating
on the double yellow;
the rude and common tendency
for sneezes to go unblessed.
No wonder. I'm invisible.
I've been on borrowed time
since high school.

A car squeals by behind me
loose fanbelt with an owner
too lazy to have it fixed.
The 9/11 memorial flag is
hung in the display case
of the shop window I'm staring through
while my eyes are transfixed by the name
I chose long ago to be myself in stories
or any other time when I'd rather not be me
like at dog fights, clinics, short-stay motel rooms.
It's printed in white on a red stripe
along with the thousands of others.
One among many, none of whom I knew
until now.

The backlighting goes out
as if on cue with fate.
My reading is curtailed
so I turn from the dark storefront
leaving my dead nom de guerre
to rest there with his peers.
And to think they call that other old stuff
Depression Glass.

If I still believed in a God
that was more than a spiteful voyeur
I would've said a prayer
for a man I'd never met.
Instead I muttered
"Sorry.
Sorry for wasting your time."
And I was
and I am
but at least now
pieces fit.