I'M Not Afraid To Die Anymore

I'm not afraid to die anymore. It happened when I realized what it'd really been like to be young. There were all these things coming in, and all of them fascinating, like the unbiased smiles of potential friends on the first day of school. When I didn't expect the pain to last. When I didn't acknowledge that laughter would end. But everything does, all the good things and the bad things, eye to eye, hand in hand. I'm not afraid to die anymore. Ring around the rosie, we all fall down. A cheerful song for death, because when we were young, we didn't divide the lines between right and wrong so quickly. I was hateful without knowing hate, self-indulgent without apology, loving, giving, happy, sad, and for a little candy, anything could be forgotten. And everything will, so I'm not afraid to die anymore. Now I'm older, and the smell of rain on the sidewalk tries to remind me what it was like. Sometimes I slow down and let it. There was the sound of church bells, when they didn't remind me of the failures of god. Dogs could entertain me for hours. A movie watched a hundred times, and a song replayed daily, for months on end. For everything, I ached. For anyone, I grinned. That was then, but it turns out that none of it was really lost, that can't be found. All I had to do was hit the ground, after losing a thing I loved too much. And get up to find that I could walk with less care than was learned, with a little less love than what was bought. With less attention, the little things distract me now. With hands that are open, but don't attach themselves too much to what is felt, I can touch almost anything, and nothing can pull so hard. Not even life. Not even death.