A Letter to Death

Angel of Death by Evelyn De Morgan (1890)

They say opposites attract,
And being true, there is no other
To whom I belong more,
My most patient lover,
Who waits in silence

Who waits in the dark.

I know what it is to be trapped,
Inside myself unwanting

To crawl out of bed,
Unable to open the window;
I know what it is to taste
The seeds of passion,
And travel deep

Beyond familiar terrain,
Venturing into the unexplored

Territories of ecstasy;
Like an ancient quest for peyote,
Pleasures of the body

Drugging my mind.

We are so quick

To slap on labels,
The pharmaceutical companies
Have seen to that;
For everything we live
Is but a disease,

A syndrome, a psychosis;
We are not to blame

For the ravages of body and mind

For our choices and our acts;
Surely we must be fixed
For our reactions are anything,
But natural, human, and honest.

Children rush,

When the ride is over
Pushing to the front of the line,
Boarding the rollercoaster yet again,
The slow climb upward as if to Heaven,
Then plunging down at breathtaking speed,
All screams and giggles with each twist and turn,
The rush of the wind, the force that pulls.

Manic, bipolar, paranoid, depressed,
Within accepted parameters of behavior,
Robotic-like in their cars,
Paralysed in traffic
The same time
Every day
Morning
Evening
Crazy.

So I taste this thing called life,
Sometimes sweet and sometimes bitter,
I swallow it nonetheless,
And hunger for more,
Devouring it like the lioness
Victorious in her hunt;
And for this I glory,
For this I suffer.

I know that opposites attract,
And one day you will come for me,
Releasing me as never before,
And I will welcome your attentions,
Willingly I will surrender to you,

After all, finally, I belong to you;
But what you take away,
Cannot be what you desire,
For you are attracted just as much,

To how my hair catches the sunlight,

and is messed by the wind,

By how I laugh, and scream,
You yearn to ride the rollercoaster
To ride beside me, just once;
But that ride is only for me,
As my death is only for you.