The air, thick and dank, tells the boxed-up stories of a hundred forgotten lives.
The cardboard whispers its tragedies as the spiders spin their lies
And a single light fights its war against the marching darkness.
What primal instinct forces us to fight another minute, another day?
The wooden planks groan in the cracked voices of those
Who have long forgotten the use of speech,
As one by one, they are conquered.
Forced to carry their charge upward, ever upward.
Is Death truly a more horrific fate than an abstract existence?
The stairs solidify, their backs slightly less bowed,
Their joints’ cries slightly more muffled
As the ages roll off, flight by flight.
Would it be worse to die
Than to live as a shadow on the face of the sun?
Wood becoming stone, becoming metal,
Metal becoming glass.
An ode to the industrial alchemist.
Would it be worse to die knowing your shape would be retained
Than to live knowing your shape has been forgotten?
The wind, seemingly absent below,
Snatches and claws at any loose fabric.
Would it be worse to die cradled in love
Than to live barren, desolate, a monument to love unrequited?
The wind pulls, insistent.
The cement edge beckons, arms flung wide
As the sun wrinkles the cityscape mirage.
Would it be worse to die for nothing, having everything
Than to live for everything and have nothing?
The cicadas whir, grinding out their mechanical warning.
It’s going to be hot today.
Would it be worse to die in a shower of light, a nebulaic tragedy,
Than to live in the sticky, unappeasable darkness
Of one who has lost their light to a wraith, masked “friend”?
Hel accepts her offering as ghostly faces twist and warp behind squares of glass,
Slipping by at ever increasing speed, blurring into streaks of blue and taupe and crimson.
Time stops, life freezes, and memory is imprinted on ash and stone.
Soon the street bears no stain.
Another box begins to gather dust,
Another spider spins another lie
And a single light loses another fight in its war against the marching darkness.
Why do we fear Death?
Afterall, people can do worse things than kill you.
