> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://poetry101.love/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# If You Knew
- URL: https://poetry101.love/if-you-knew/
- Published: 2022-10-31T19:21:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-12-04T20:21:50.000Z
- Description: by Ellen Bass
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Ellen Bass, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

What if you knew you'd be the last  
to touch someone?  
If you were taking tickets, for example,  
at the theater, tearing them,  
giving back the ragged stubs,  
you might take care to touch that palm,  
brush your fingertips  
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase  
too slowly through the airport, when  
the car in front of me doesn't signal,  
when the clerk at the pharmacy  
won't say *Thank you,* I don't remember  
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.  
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,  
a young gay man with plum black eyes,  
joked as he served the coffee, kissed  
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.  
Then they walked half a block and her aunt  
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume  
have to come? How wide does the crack  
in heaven have to split?  
What would people look like  
if we could see them as they are,  
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,  
reckless, pinned against time?

Bass, Ellen. [The Human Line](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The%5FHuman%5FLine/6lK9KRbsVHQC?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United States, Copper Canyon Press, 2012.

---

### Why I Chose this Poem

I've had this one in the backlog for a while. It seems right to put it up at a time when the veil is thin. What I love the most about this ... it isn't about carpe diem, it isn't about a grand gesture or making much of time. It's the ordinary moments. What would we see?