One Day I'Ll Poem by Euginia Tan

One day I'll creep up from behind you
Then blind you with my hair
My fist gagging you

That'll be the day I start to question
Capital punishment.

You should have just finished me off altogether
Instead of letting me live.

Let them all live.
Let them feel life creeping up slowly from behind them
Gagging them with the years

Let them suffocate under the weight of their memories.
When the prison guard shouts YOU THERE.
Let them know how even my goldfish has a name.

I have faced life once
As though it were a sentence.

A sentence unmarred by punctuation
Going on and on and on and on and on

Until one day I realized I was not a killer,
I could choose to rise from the dead.
I lived life like a fugitive with my name smeared in red.

So let them live.
Let life drone on and on and on and on and on to them
A priest with a never-ending sermon

Reducing them to tears.
Revealing all their shame.
A sentence