woe to my selfish demise

i’d like to say

i would go out

heroically

a martyr, if you will

burning, burning

in synchronously tragic and glorious flames

or maybe yield to gradual decay

from ‘bright girl’ to a fistful of dust

in the grimy corner of a prison cell

oh, to believe

with such radical sincerity!

but reality

has a made a cowardly thing of me

and i’d much prefer

a hasty farewell to this life

whether in sleep

or, worst best case scenario,

in an unforeseeable moment of consciousness

-- a single, sudden crack into uncharted eternity

most of all, though

i’d like to press my back to the earth

let my eyelids fall, imprinted with the ghosts of clouds

and fall into an endless dream

of waltzing with gravity

for an audience of seagulls and songbirds

and so death has become

more like a conceited fairtyale than a fatality

in the dark, dark depths

of my hopelessly romantic mind