Trying to hold it in
Racking cough
Churns up your throat
Bursts through those dark cracked lips

They say that Death is a cloaked figure
That haunts the shadowy corners
Where no one dares to venture.

Well I say
She is in every jealous caress
She is in every lover’s parting kiss
She is in every line traced upon your palm

She walks free under the same flag
She cries and screams with the same voice as us
She loves and loses the same as us

But she cannot hope the same as us.
She has no body to give
She has no heart to throb
She has no soul to devote

Death is someone to be pitied.
She is not something to be feared.