Letter To Death Poem by Kelly Sweet

Death.
She teeters on the edge of you. And I am left to watch her fall.
She plays with bending over and stretching her arms toward your empty unknown vacuum and I cannot pull her back.
I cannot make her stay. I must stand 50 feet away, and watch.
This is the time when everything I have always believed about that vast white hole is questioned.
Will it come crashing down on me and leave me amidst a pile of rubble I must sort through and rebuild?
Or will my fears that I have always told myself I do not have be gone forever?
Death.
What is the point of the waiting, of the constant anticipation for the one moment she falls into the abyss?
Why does she linger so?
Why make us wait?
Why, why, why?
I cannot imagine that a significant piece of life will truly be gone, like a bite taken out of the apple of my heart.
I cannot imagine that feeling.
Will it feel as though she is still here, only departed for a while?
Will it feel as though she is gone completely forever?
I cannot shake the feeling of sickness from my stomach, stress from my brow, fragility and silence from my limbs.
Is this really happening?
How is this happening?
Everything seems so much the same, and only she is different.
Death.
Why do you do this to us?
Why not let us see beyond the walls and curtains of this reality into what lies ahead of us?
Why make us wonder and anticipate the falling of the axe in fear and sorrow?
If only for the comfort that she will be all right?
Death.
Of all the times I have thought to myself I am not afraid, perhaps it was not the passing that I feared most.
Perhaps it was the anticipation of this moment, while she teeters back and forth, that truly frightens me.
For once she is out of my hands, she will be in yours, and in yours I cannot do anything, I must trust you will take care of her.
My heart is heavy.
My chest is hollow and heavy.
It aches.
Death.
I pray to you that you bring us swift salvation from this horrid joke, I pray to you that you bring us comfort when she falls into your hands.
I feel you waiting in the wings.
I feel you relaxing in the chair in her bedroom, reading a book, and awaiting the moment of departure.
I have felt you in this house for months.
Why must you wait so long?
Why must you tease us by waiting here, and then make her sit in agony while you look on?
Death.
It is a cruel joke, you have put on us.
One in which the punchline never seems to come.
And when it finally does, it is our tears, not our laughter that applauds you.
Death.
You hover.
You wait.
I would ask you to take her home, to end all of our suffering, but you will not hear me.
I have asked before.
Death.
So I ask you this instead, treat her especially kindly.
She is a special one.