It Will Be. . .

When I die I will die alone. And that's okay. Pay no lip service to my passing. I know you have more pressing business to attend to. You needn't feel guilty. That. Both our hands were empty when the time arrived. It's no more -- or, rather, no less -- than I expected. I've never been a people person. Their presence wearies me. Terribly. Sometimes.

I wonder. How long it will be before I am forgotten. A year? A Month? A week? Sooner? I think that I'm a memory already. A face in a rear view mirror. A voice on an old LP. Receding. Growing scratchy after repeated play time. I am. A few words scribbled on a page. That no one will look at five minutes after the notebook closes. I am. But one day. It will be as if I never were.

Nothing I've ever said or done. Has ever meant a thing to anyone. Neither my words. Nor my DNA. Will survive my last breath. My spirit. If ever I had one. Left my body. Long ago. I have been soulless these last few years. That will make my death easier. When it comes. I hope. Only the living rail against. The dying of the light. My eyes are used to the darkness. They won't recognize the change.

If you're looking for a reason to live. Look elsewhere. You will find no hopeful messages. With my name beneath them. I've searched for redemption. And found redemption to be. A bedtime story. Told to an idiot child. Immortality is a nightmare I no longer entertain. If you'd like someone to tell you it all means something. Read someone else's thoughts on the matter.

Like Dante's damned. Newly arrived to eternity. I am without feathers. Naked in the shivered rays. Of a hard morning. And the mornings get harder as the days go by. The priest's cubbyhole. Curtained in the quiet and the warm. Apart from the living world. Has a sign hung on its sorry little door. "God is dead. . . Soon you will be also. . . . Confessions heard one to four."