Maybe Poem by Crystal Floyd

Maybe we are not afraid of death

But we fear our name
Being plucked from the air

Of the silence surrounding
Just a single thing

That is just no longer there.

Because we can never know

About the life span
of a single sound

How many years after a body stops

That their names
will truly stick around.

Maybe it goes on for future generations

And it echoes one last time, then never

Until the space that it had once filled,
is replaced

But is unknown
and lost forever.

Or maybe there is another way

After it lives and we all fade

I believe that is the reason why

So many of us tend to write our names

Inside of most of the books that we own

And anything that we have ever made

It is a small portion of remembrance

Within a world that is most likely to forget.

And the taste of who we were

Rest upon the lips of people that we have never even met

But I hope that they will stumble upon the stories

That we have loved
or just worn out with age.

Because I believe that
is where they will find

What it is that we
will actually have left

So there our name appears
on the front cover page
and for just one brief moment.
It is almost as if we
had been beaten to death

That it is in the whisper of those words

That we have even taken
yet another breath.

© Crystal K. Floyd
October 29,2020