Messages from the subconscious: Choose

She doesn't know us well enough    
or why she's here    
this strange blur of a teenage girl      
like a past    
or projection    
dragging her up our wind-whipped corridors    
sun-glare off dust      
whirling 'round our concrete floors  
faces      
and half-built plywood walls    
half-open    
twelve hundred feet up    
     
She doesn't know yet    
we are    
her unfinished business    
     
We feel questions in the slow scuff of shoes    
the way she tries to squint      
through sting and bright and haze      
gentle protest during cease-fires    
but we insist    
and she follows      
     
A gift for the wakening:    
Little more than a moment's stunning view      
of funnel clouds come to fruition over the city    
heading for this half-cocked mental construct    
     
We bolster the heavy metal door      
this side of a dead drop-off on this floor    
tell her to hold it    
stay low    
(at twelve hundred feet)    
and she does    
     
Twister nuzzles the door    
then it goes    
and we move up the last concrete ramp    
to more dust      
and plywood half-walls      
open sky    
     
"I'm sorry to have deceived you"    
We say, still holding her hand    
[She won't see]    
"I should have said something    
but I wanted you here"    
     
She turns to rub her eyes clear    
while our projection steps up to balance      
on the thin plywood wall      
turns face to lazy clouds with open arms    
and flies for the last time    
straight down    
     
No dust    
No wind    
     
We feel urgency, regrets of "too late"      
in scudding of shoes    
on all six floors back down    
where there's an ambulance waiting    
but no paramedics    
     
On the shadow side      
of our tower of half-baked ambitions    
lie four children -    
one of them    
our projection    
     
[She's still oblivious    
but she'll see it on the wakening]    
     
We feel confusion in the shuffling shoes, searching      
for anyone under this creeping quiet
other than the too-sane policeman    
tenderly slipping a medal      
over one of his dead sons' necks    
     
Her gaze gathers the consciousness    
that our projection had a sister    
or has done this same thing in a younger body -    
hasn't noticed yet    
it's her peaceful double    
dressed in her staggering      
stifled anger    
     
She'll see it on the wakening    
We are her unfinished business