What Keeps Me Going Poem by Jenny Kalahar

What keeps me going, I think
is curiosity
and fear
a mixture that melts at night before I give
my body sleep
while the pillow is still felt
against my ear
and while I still feel its soft curve
at my neck
releasing tension into the pillow's support
and with hair covering my eyes, nightmask-like
that mixture comes:
curiosity about morning
fear of everlasting night
of going into death alone

I hate the uncontrollableness of death.
If I knew that there would be air to breathe
in spectral lungs
if there would be seventy-five-degree days
and blanket-warm nights
I might be okay.
But I'm selfish
I'm lonely already
I want everything to be the same, only different
I want my people around me
I want you there
but I don't want you to have to go first
I want time to stop until you're there
I want to have my good memories with me
and I'll want you to remember the feel of me against you
even though we won't have these shells about our souls

What keeps me going
is the fear of satisfying curiosity at last.
What keeps me going is waiting to see
how this unsatisfying world will end