The word “terror” is drawn in an exercise on similes

Like a small child
cowering at the shoreline
of a great inky ocean
while the night sky yawns.

Like a recovering alcoholic
whose palms are sweating
into a twenty dollar bill, standing outside
during happy hour.

Like an astronaut
burning up on reentry
tilted at just the wrong angle
unable to slow his fall from grace.

Like an empty vastness of horizon
daring to touch beyond the rim of perception
taunting us with lifetimes of distance we barely dream of seeing
from our one, wet, salivary drop of a world.

Like seeing black and white photographs
of an atom bomb that kissed a small,
Pacific island with the chapped lips
of a spiteful god.

Or like being a boy of only eighteen,
trying to eat spaghetti, when
his girlfriend tells him, quietly,
that she is behind schedule.