death will tap your shoulder
seven times a lifetime
that’s what i’ve learnt
but when you whip your head around
death will have been long gone
and i suppose it’s fun to think about
that maybe death came and stood behind me for an entire week
but that’s not how death works
death will come to greet you  at even intervals
perhaps once when you are fourteen
and again when you are twenty one
and then when you are thirty nine

i am twenty now
and death scares me just as much as when i was a child
not the thought of dying,
but the thought of leaving things unfinished.