Dissociation in the parking lot

  
Why does it always hit me at the grocery store,
of all places?  
The fact that I am  
   
…skating…  
   
…gliding through the motions  
of a normal, healthy person  
who participates in this plane of  
superficial existence,  
concerned about important matters like  
price,  
pesticides,  
local production,  
but actually I am simply  
skating  
over the slippery surface of life  
while beneath me is something unfathomably deep  
and I think it looks like  
cold, dark death  
but    
maybe it’s  
bright hot ecstasy  
and I wonder if the teenager at the checkout knows the answer,  
or if the man pushing the cart behind his wife senses it too,  
or if the woman wrestling the toddler understands  
   
and when I hear the cracks creaking closer  
and the ice wobbles with my weight  
I’m simultaneously  
terrified  
and    
exhilarated  
at what I might find  
if the illusion of sanity breaks  
and I    
   
fall  
   
through  
   
.  
   
.  
   
.