By Charika Swanepoel

When you're spread out upon the table

It’s never a sad montage of the good and bad gone by but a very,
very unclimactic angst. You look the anaesthesiologist up and down,
and think, “my god, this man probably does his own ironing.”
You worry that he’s too precise, too careful, and life too volatile.
He’ll be calculating and pinpointing but you’ll still be dying
flat on your back, no catchy last words or quick confidence
but a voluntary check out for no good reason at all.

CHARIKA SWANEPOEL is a South African poet, writer and literary scholar at the North-West University, where she is pursuing an M.A. in English poetry with a special focus on T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats. She is also a volunteer reader at Helen: A Literary Magazine.