Maybe I Am Death

Maybe I Am Death

written by: Arlin

 

since september 16
i’ve wondered if i am death.

not because i killed her.
that’s an important distinction.
maybe death doesn’t kill anyone.

maybe we’ve misunderstood
the job entirely.

maybe the reaper
doesn’t reap.

maybe he witnesses.

arrives at exactly the right second
looking ordinary
while the universe
does what it was going to do anyway.

i was there.
out of everyone
who could have been,
i was there.

and she came down
and i ran toward her.

sometimes that feels
too perfectly arranged.

not by god.
i don’t know if i believe in that.

just arranged.

like something placed me
on one side of a moment
and her
on the other.

i wonder if she saw me.

i hope she didn’t.
that thought makes me sick.

i hope there wasn’t enough time
left for seeing.

but sometimes i imagine
her eyes finding mine.
a stranger
running toward her.

what a strange last person to have.
maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work.

the grim reaper
is supposed to collect you.

i don’t know what that means.

collect what?

the body stayed.

her clothes stayed.
her shoes stayed.
her blood … stayed.

everything i could see was still there.
so if something left,
i missed it.

or maybe it passed through me.

maybe for one second
i was standing in the doorway
without knowing
there was a door.

i used to think
the scythe was for cutting life short.

now i wonder
if it’s for separating things.

body from whatever
isn’t body.
before from after.
here from whatever comes next.

maybe there is no whatever comes next.
maybe the blade only separates a person
from the people who remain.

if i was death that day,
i was terribly unprepared.

no robe.
no instructions.
no great understanding
of the universe.

i couldn’t tell her
where she was going.

i couldn’t tell myself.

you’d think death
would know more about death.

maybe that’s why
he wears black.
maybe he’s grieving.

imagine meeting someone at exactly the moment
they become impossible to know.

maybe he doesn’t carry souls.
maybe he carries
what gets left with him.

a face.
a sound.
a date.

the exact shape
of one afternoon.

things too small to prove a person existed
but too heavy to put down.

maybe death isn’t something
that came for her.
maybe death is something
that happened to me too.

not dying.
something quieter.

like she passed through
some invisible boundary
and left the boundary inside me.

before september 16
death was mostly theoretical.

a word.
a fact.

afterward
it had weight.
distance.
sound.
it occupied space.

maybe that’s where
the grim reaper actually lives.

not underground.
not beside the dying.

inside the people
who have seen him.

maybe that’s why
we give him a body.

a skull.
hands.
a robe.

it is easier to imagine
death as something
standing outside of us.

something we might see coming.

but mine doesn’t carry a scythe.

mine lives somewhere
behind my eyes.
she falls
and it wakes up.

i think of september 16
and there it is.
not taking her.
not saving her.
just watching
from the same place
i watched from.

maybe i met death that day
or became acquainted with it.

maybe some part of it
passed through me

when whatever was her
stopped being something
i could reach.

sometimes,
i wonder if that’s what
a witness becomes,

a place for death
to keep existing
after the body is gone.

and maybe that’s why
i still dream about her.

death needed somewhere
to go and she couldn’t take it with her.