Some Nights, Death Plays with Its Food

Even dying, the chores of the living
Keep trying to reoccupy your mind
So insistently you start to believe

Your diagnosis was always a lie.
You’re not dying at all. You’re just a wreck—
Unhealthy, sure, and dependent on meds,

But with all the old chores, old work, old dreck
Of deadlines and bills, general busyness.
Here you thought dying meant better living,

Life without effort, not striving to live,
But instead you’ve just extended living
With all its nuisances, into a phase

Of lingering unhealthiness, sped up
Version of the ordinary aging
Everyone not dying has to work with—

Faster than average disintegration,
But nothing like detachment from the world
Of brute maintenance, nothing like the glide

Straight into the wide-open mouth of death,
More like finding yourself speared by the end
Of death’s many-tined eating utensil—

Gobbet vaguely waved around in the air
As death gestures with you to make a point.
How long until you can get swallowed whole?