Hauntings
My second birth had complications - it was smooth and fast - but with interventions and for a few moments breathing in raw oxygen from a mask, waiting to stabilize I thought I had won - as if I had come close to death. But death was closer than that; death was down the street, and around the corner, four days later - and when we heard the news, we didn't believe it. You haunted me for a year, exactly one year. How did I fight so hard to live when you fought so hard to leave (all of us there, staring at you asleep in your casket?) Everyone haunts me for one year it's like a rite of passage to the other side, but I - I don’t know if this rite was yours or mine. Who gave you the right? I thought about you more then than when you were alive; but your mom flew in and assumed we were friends. I had no answers for her, so why did she comfort me in the end? I know who will haunt me based on how much I cry; I wept for days for no reason, while You stood in the corner of my eye - everywhere I turned I saw your reaction to my life. I made big changes that year some good, a few bad, but always you were there a willing mirror: judging me until I’d choose what to subtract, what to add. What would Katie think? I asked as if you knew - suddenly, omnisciently - how afraid I was to lose. I strived to live with all the meaning you left behind; because your choice shook the very foundations of mine, left me questioning the Very Last Lie: that being alive was enough, that serial complacency wasted no one’s time. Because sooner or later, whether we bother to live or not … we all die. ©2024 @StaceyBattlestheWorld
