death is simply the
absence of life.
but life cannot be the
converse. life cannot be
absence of death,
for death lurks around the
corner, death thrives
inside us all. every breath, the
last we may take. every
blink, the
last we may see the light.

for when i walk down the
street, whenever i cross a
busy intersection, i heed the
grin of death in the confines of
my mind. this cheshire cat smile, the
bane of my existence...
end of my existence. the
car that is whizzing by could
hit me, whisking me away, the
plastic bag caught in the wind,
dandelion seeds blown off the
stem of a **** by an innocent child.

[she doesn’t yet know her own mortality.]

i was that girl once, playing with the
boy from next door,
without the
crushing reality
that i could slip, hit my head on the
boulder on my lawn
and end my life, just like i ended the
lives of that colony of ants i
thoughtlessly massacred earlier.

and what about the
sinister knife i hold in the kitchen?
what about the
infinite pills in my drawer?
what about the
precipitous stairs in my apartment?
how easy it is to end the
life i have spent so long
cultivating, constructing; the
meaningless hours i have spent
doing things that make me long to
abstain from life and feign death in the
only place that makes death appear to be
the favorable option.

death lingers in the shadows.
it is the one thing i am certain of
in life.