POETRY: 8 Minutes by Regina Duggins

8 Minutes

Brain cells begin to die after 1 minute without oxygen.
Serious brain damage is likely to occur 3 minutes without breathing.
But it took 2 men to hold me down, and  in less than 2 minutes my life was turned upside down.
Two times too many have I heard the stories that ended in
I’m sorry.
In 4 minutes a couple can make eye contact
Endorphins in the brain cause them to feel love, lust, a new need for the other.
The adrenaline increases the intimacy
I feel nervous,
I can’t talk,
It doesn’t feel natural,
Should I blink or will I lose the moment.
I learned the truth that you weren’t for me as I was for you.
A mere distraction, refined and anew
The longest silence in my life,
The hardest anger that I had encounter
55 months of marriage; I’ve never thought about what you were thinking.
I realized I needed you and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else but you.
Let alone never speaking again to you.
I’ll be ready in 5 minutes is exactly as I’ll be home in 5 minutes.
Equivalent to the sum of two and three; one more than four;
My tears trickled down my face and formed puddles of pain, regret, fears, hurt, desperation, hopelessness, all your lies streamed down like a river running over the hard wood parchment floors.
Creating six ways to the days leading to seven that I’ll be able to let go and count the ways the weeks rolled into months and months into years.
You made the days stand still when you pierced my heart with all of your fears.
Finally, 8 minutes came of despair.
Eight weeks, two missed periods, the ultrasound is done but you find out the heartbeat that once moved rapidly was failing faint and then there was none.
Like the night when it all happened a three-some with two male individuals who could have been the babies daddy?
The tragedy ended but my heart has never mended.
But for eight minutes, I was reminded that a creation had descended from my body saving me from the shame and regrets from the memory that he or she could have belonged to anybody.
8 minutes of heartache without a name!

by Regina Duggins
www.blackmagicpoetry.vpweb.com/