The Obituary Of A Nobody

Death is a funny thing, isn't it? 

Years —

of breath measured in sighs and stutters,

of existence squeezed into calendars and conversations,

of building a self out of borrowed truths and morally flexible promises —

gone like a gust of wind

into the depths of an existential void you can't snap out of.

And what’s left?

Bones and bureaucracy.

Ashes bottled in inexpensive brass.

Your name spelled right on the death certificate

but it's grammar, wrong on people’s tongues.

You become a photo frame,

gathering dust beside a leaking wall.

You become stories told by liars who loved you,

each one polishing your ghost

until it gleams and shines enough to be missed so you find an excuse to remember.

But life —

life was chaos and creaking and compromise,

a script you improvised,

scene by scene: uncertain, unhinged, undone.

Death?

Death is too neat.

Too final.

Too smug in its certainty.

The great full stop.

The goddamn climax

in a play that never found its plot.

Who were you?

What were you?

Why were you?

Second-hand answers from third-hand grief.

A eulogy that turns flesh into metaphor.

As if a life can be stitched into syntax.

As if meaning survives in mourning.

As if how many show up at your funeral measures how well you lived.

Maybe you’re not afraid of dying.

Maybe you’re afraid of ceasing to exist, 

Of being diluted

in dried-up tears,

in healed heartbreaks,

in the silence that follows after the music forgets your name.

Maybe you’re not scared of death, 

just terrified of a life this easily forgettable.

Maybe death would be a lot easier

if life wasn't a grocery list of skin and flesh wasn't a commodity measured in paper currencies and plastic legacies.