7 Minutes

Seven minutes

after death.

Only then,

the brain stops.

The heart fails.

The body stiffens.

Everything ends.

But the brain doesn’t.

Seven minutes,

420 seconds.

Agonizingly short,

The final stretch.

And yet, it is

infinitely long.

Those seven minutes

are the most precious.

What happens in those seven minutes?

What does the brain conjure as it dies out?

What happens to you,

in your final moments?

Do you hear your mother crying by your bedside?

As the doctor delivers the horrid news and the

heart monitor shrieks

that flatline sound, which is death.

Do you see anything?

Or does the light of the emergency room

fade from your cold, empty eyes,

as you are encompassed by darkness.

The cold AC blowing on your arm,

as your body goes limp.

And your heart stops pumping.

Cessation.

Perhaps there are no senses,

and you are stuck in a void.

Floating in the shadow

of your former soul.

Do the rules of time apply?

Do those seven wicked minutes

feel like seven minutes?

Or are they not?

Do they pass in an instant?

And to you, true death,

the termination of the brain,

Feels instant?

Or are you stuck in that void?

That hellish purgatory,

devoid of a guiding light,

forever.

Does the body cease all functions? But the

brain, your cruel, unrelenting god, Does it

hold you there?

A prisoner in nothingness.

As harrowing as death is,

leaving so many families distraught.

Is it what you long for?

For an end is the purest release.

Or is all of that wrong?

And there is a horror,

even worse,

lying in those seven minutes.

What if.

You relive.

Everything.

In seven minutes.

The moments you found love.

The moments you grieved.

The moments you cried.

The moments you lived.

Every single irrelevant or pivotal second of your life,

from your birth to your death,

relieved by your brain,

as hyperrealistic hallucinations.

Would you see your life,

as an omniscient god?

Or do you experience it all,

again?

If you relive everything,

would you know it?

Or would you be oblivious,

and utterly blind?

Am I writing this poem,

as a live person?

Or am I a husk,

on a hospital bed?

Have I died?

Am I being mourned?

Or will I not know it,

and continue writing?

Will death offer me release.