Monday, December 17, 2012

Four Days to Live

They say we're going to die in four days. 

The earth will end.
We will cease.
No more
of anything.
And tonight I find my brain
in a place that shouldn't matter
because I don't believe
in myths.
I try to call it back
but it refuses
because what if they're right?
What if the earth will end?
What if we really will cease?
What will there be when there's no more
of anything?

And what should you do
with four days to live?

My car sits idle in the driveway.
The keys are hiding in the
bottom
of my purse.
There's a map of The States crumpled
between the seat and the heater
and it reminds me that I could just
                      leave.
That there's more out there than
little Aberdeen.

The sun is setting again on this
overly-concerned population
but it also caves upon
skeletal children who'd rejoice
if they knew about the rumors
that their pain-stricken lives
are going to cease.
And I've wasted
eighteen years and
two hundred twenty-one days
being too concerned with
having enough money
to buy snacks at school
everyday
and whether or not my
shade of lipstick
is too dark.

I don't care what color red they put onto
my dead lips
because underneath,
they will be gray--
matching the color of
the knowledge I'll die with
and the shade of
all the words I'll have spoken
If I only have
four days to live.
But I don't want to die within
those shades of gray.
I don't want to be afraid
of what I don't know,
where I haven't been,
who I never met,
words I never said.
Because I don't want to lack those things.

In twenty-six hours,
I could be in New Zealand.
In two, I could be standing inside the
White House.
And in a slice
of a second,
I could be
                           gone.
So maybe it's not a bad thing
that my brain likes the places that shouldn't matter
because in those places, I find
ambition
and the call to be
something greater
and the understanding that
if I only had four days to live,
I'd want to spend them
somewhere far away,
with a pen in my hand
and compassion in my heart.

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