When Death Came

When Death came for you, it swallowed you whole and immediately spit you back out, like you were not wheat ready to be reaped, a soul ripe for the harvest, but instead an ambrosia so sickly sweet in its divinity that the maw had no choice but to send you back from where you came.

When Death came for you, you saw the potential made real, the set of all possible worlds laid in front of you like you were dealing cards to an infinite number of players, like you were cocooning your head in warm sand, like you were studying every line at every moment on every face of every person you ever loved.

When Death came for you, it did not greet you like an old friend, as it should have; it spit venom and contempt and kept you at an arm’s length and shrugged its shoulders and flipped you off.

When Death came for you, you saw pen and ink and pen and ink and pen and ink and pen and ink and pen and ink and God did not stop writing your story.

When Death came for you, I told it that I love you and it walked away.

When Death came for you, when it finally, really, came for you, it had been so long that it did not remember that you had met before.