Your Last Day, Your Last Smile, Your Last Breath

I am trying to die.

>>>

I remember my AC went out while I was driving through the Mojave Desert once, and I spent a grueling three hours with the windows down, slowly baking to death (brittle bones in the shrubbery). At some point I felt like I was melting, none of my sun guards were doing any good, and I thought, I convinced myself that my skin was going to drip off my hands down the steering wheel any moment now (red sands at sunset). My exposed muscles rippled in my minds eye.

I kept driving.

>>>

It smells like rain, electric and humid and ominous (lightning before thunder), like the sirens will sounds any second, like we will have to run and hide. The porch light is swinging and I stand on the edge of the steps, listening for your footsteps up the drive, for the flash and dry thunder that follows, hair standing up just before the ground is struck in front of me and I nearly collapse from shock. You run up the gravel path and into my arms, shaking, bury your face into my chest. We stumble backward into the house. (the raindrops are ashen)

It begins to pour.

>>>

There is a cliff and I cannot see the bottom, a faded, cool grey nothing of fog drowning out the depths of the fall in softness, I stand so close I worry the edge will crumble but I don’t move away. It is so still here, only breath and air, stone and silence, even my haunting song leaves no echo, no trace of change (to nothingness, to unknowing), only the whispers of the wind remain. I am half-tempted to jump, l’appel du vide it is called, to close my eyes and fly off into the nothingness. I teeter towards falling, warring with myself in quiet isolation. (if I shove you’ll fall too)

As I am about to turn away, there is a push from behind.

>>>

All things must end, this we know with certainty. Wail and slam the bars of your life all you like (buy yourself roses, stay out past midnight), caged in your mortality, you know soon enough it will be your last day, your last smile, your last breath. Do not be afraid of what is to come.