A soft beginning at the dawn of day,
at the dawn of the universe,
where light didn’t hurt
and darkness hadn’t nested inside of my lungs,
blowing out ash with my every breath,
already awaiting my disintegration.
A softer ending-
when God isn’t watching
and I can become
the one who didn’t have to beg for immortality,
because I didn’t want it in the first place.
I speak in the spaces between words,
I walk with one foot over existence
and another over the no-longer-here,
and would it matter if I slipped
and fell
or if I burned at the moon’s mercy on a starless night?
There’s no difference in unmaking,
there’s no one to say I haven’t lived the seconds I stole
from my mother when she screamed me into being.
God wasn’t watching then.
The emptiness in my chest
turned outward
and spread like mold on the forbidden fruit.
They say Eve regretted her mistake.
I’m not so sure anymore.