Death Becomes Me

I have spent five years,

Searched high and low my brain and life,

For which day changed my mind

From prosperity to greet terror, galore.

Was it great papa’s death?

That which I sense in my bed, miles away?

And then mine purgatory sentence in limbo

Wherein I lived between my mourning and survival,

My life and death and the death around me?

What made me cursed as I am?

What age was I when death first spied me?

And which parts of me were prettiest,

Which pound of my flesh was sweetest then, toughest now?

And why did I, distraught with sorrow, later on,

Dare ever let death in, dare let death speak with me?

Still, the past is done and gone.

Today, years on, death and I commune like lovers.

I sleep with death, dine with it, bathe with death on my mind.

I cradle death again my chest at night,

Whisper promises as it counts the beating of my heart

I spin tales of our reuniting soon, for I so suffer.

We speak more than my closest friends, most physical lovers.

Perhaps death and I have come so close

And become so compassionate with each other

For my beckoning of death, my taunting of it,

My longing for it and so too my fear and hunger of death.

It is the toll I toil to pay, for death to take me one day

Sooner than my end days, shortening my earthly stay.

A curse I have so placed upon myself!

A curse by the enemy I treat as my friend!