I Fear Death
I fear death, not quite death but yours, and not yours but mine
I guess I fear my death in being your survivor, but not quite
I fear grief, that it might consume me once more, but not mine
I guess it is your sorrow and despair at death that is drowning my life
I've been here before; I don't know how I survived or what inside me died
I had so many questions that she never answered; they never left, never died
So your gasping breath brings back my sorrow from that walled in stasis
I teeter on the rim of a well that reaches grief's bottom blackness, I lied
It is not your pain I fear, it's mine. I did not survive her deathbed
I never again lived. I died with her though peace I never found
I don't know if it was her death, my loss, hers, or the death cycle
But the air has stayed musty from graves while I pretended not to care
I don't know if I was there for her, or how she felt that last morning.
My memory lapses with that of the child I was then into dreams of gray
I don't know the pain of death, if it is worse to leave or know you are leaving
I don't know if she found peace or her heart broke for me or because of me.
Sorrow swells as the memories fade in, filling that well with blackness
I know that if I don't fall, it will rise up to suffocate me again
If I jump I will lose myself and never find you to say goodbye
My memory lapses, I think I jumped, did I tell her goodbye?
I fear my grief. Grief is all, nothing before or after exists.
I fear that grief will over shadow my mind and I won't be there
I fear that this sorrow will rob me of the words to say I love you
I fear despair will take my soul and this time I'll have nothing left of home.
How do I ask you to share this life with me when I don't know if I'll survive your death?
How do I ask you to live each day and don't let me run when I ran from her?
How do I ask you to believe in me and don't fear when I fear myself?
How do I ask you to comfort me when I'm too afraid to comfort you?
I never asked her to hold me again, to comfort, because she was the one dying.
What right do I have to ask the sick to comfort the healthy, the dead the living?
And how could I, being the first spirit to die, ask the ones who speak of life still
to comfort the shell I left behind while theirs decays before my eyes?
There are no comforts to sooth the guilt of living, but forgiveness will birth new life.
Copyright © Tara Jennings | Year Posted 2010
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