Life, The Longest Death

Have you ever stared endlessly at the seas,

wondering where the beauty is —

the beauty poets wrote odes to?

Any of it?

All of it,

blurred into a lump of cosmic void —

pale skies and paler seas

fornicating into an ugly, hopeless, unalive blue.

So excruciatingly anaemic,

you start wondering

if you're losing sight —

or worse, losing it all.

And with the last remaining shallow breaths,

and quickly numbing limbs,

you decide to make a final run.

A decadent glimmer of hope

trying to outrun

the morbid skin of time —

a bleeding existential crisis' last cry for help,

possibly shipwrecked,

where the seas and skies

don’t seem eternal anymore,

just bone-deep.

You run,

like a helpless mother runs

with her dying child

clutched between bloodied arms

and hollow breasts.

But the sands —

they drift apart,

disintegrate grain by grain,

your feet sinking further

with every step planted

into the flesh of it.

You realise it’s quicksand —

an elaborate death trap

set up intricately

by your own reluctant existence,

designed not to kill you,

but to keep you failing at escape.

You'd hoped the end

would be quick and easy.

But life doesn’t believe in easy.

Easy

is mercy.

And mercy isn't a good enough cocktease for life.

Life doesn't do mercy.

What does life do instead?

A slow, loathing surrender

drawn out to the edge

of an atheist’s final prayer.

You bend your knees,

hands folded in submission,

waiting for life

to be sucked out

like air in a vacuum.

But just when you’re ready —

eyes clenched hard,

eyeballs drowning

into a peach-black oblivion —

Life throws you back

into your bed.

Eyes wide open.

Closure denied.

Heart ticking.

Existence waking

to the horror

of having to live

all of it

all over again.