Death Has Crossed My Horizon

I do not heal as when I was young— Time has slowed its gentle hands, And left me in a hush of dusk, With brittle bones and shifting sands. The skies I once believed would stay Have wept their stars and turned away, And I—still dreaming—drift between The shadowed now, the might-have-been. My dreams are lucid, sharp as glass, Each night I walk the years I've passed, And find in faces I once knew A silence I can’t quite undo. Back then I wore a crown of light, A girl who thought herself the sun— What foolishness! To think the flame Would never flicker, never run. Immortal once—I breathed with stars, And laughed at death as far, afar. But now I feel his steady tread, And hear him whisper near my bed. I do not fear—pray understand: All life must slip from mortal hands.