Choose Right at the Top of the Stairs

What Superstition Cannot Change

18 Lines

This poem is entered in Round 88 of "Shadows and Light Poetry Contest" 


Choose Right at the Top of the Stairs

If only a choice could change the past
if the bride had turned right instead of left that day
could it have stopped the unveiled runaway train?
the phone ringing too late on a Sunday evening to turning left at the top of the stairs?

Superstition is about choices made and legends shattered
if we turned right would a better decision have saved her?
could it have stopped the inevitable violence of a ghost lying on a bed...
and despair that bled into the Monday morning September rain?

If only to know the consequences ahead of time
and unraveling some unknowable thought process, in spirit, if not reality
Maybe it would unleash a different series of events
that would hurt even more than what transpired

But choices were made and dies were cast
in a lonely New York hotel room, right next to a cell phone on a pillow
Nine years ago this year
When no one bothered to call for help

on a sunny day in September
until it was too late for anything but rain...

18 Lines