Dearest Death,

Most dear of my darknesses…my soul’s oldest companion… …I’ve been catching a hint of your scent at obscure corners of the day. Closing my eyes, so as not to lose sight of your evolution, I center, and invite you…come closer…but a breeze shifts or an axis slips, and with it your essence flees…fleeting, yet timeless and unparalleled…the first sentence on the last page of a beloved book, a matchstick in full flame burning a quarter way down, the entirety of the month of August…the distinct scent of almost…and didn’t we almost more times than most mortals should be allowed. I wear your mysteries upon my head…the crown of cicada husks you honored me…bestowing the call of shadow to reside just below the surface of my skin…awakening and tempting, tormenting and pure. Under vacuous skies I’ve communed with earth, mud-caked and primal…I dug up bones, exhuming the confusion of man…my tongue coated in clove, I signaled for a mean, for an opportunity to convey what seasons instinct…but no one saw, the ghost of me, released and fallen, a pink petal caught up in the cyclone of city cacophony … …I dreamt of three sisters, tornadoes that hummed and vibrated at the pitch of my name…just beneath, the timbre of your laugh…the line they cleared, a repetitive path, foretold of my erasure, the severing and the seam… …and still, I wear your curiosity like a mourning veil…knowing you avoid, so as not to take…but my end could only ever be yours, my soul trusts, my heart bleeds… …we both know I’m not leaving this flesh alive…so come forth, excavate and discover, eclipse and blind…I only want to make it out of here if traveling at your side is my absolute divine…

E.A. O'Connell