Death
Death arrives on a random Tuesday in a million forms.
He shows up unannounced, draws you in, asks for your dance card and at the end of the night wraps his cloak around your shoulders. Heavy, dark, suffocating. And before you know it, the night ends and your wearing a garment that you never asked for. When you call the next morning about giving it back, he tells you to hold onto it. So you do, draping it on the chair in the corner of your room or randomly throwing it in the back of your car incase you run into him, because what other places would you keep a cartoonishly large piece of darkness that you don't want to forget you're holding onto for someone who so generously offered it to you? A gift for a moment, right? Wait, was it even cold last night?
You abruptly pause in the kitchen while pouring hot water into your tea cup when you recognize how familiar Death seemed. The steaming water overflowing as you stare blankly out the window. Slowly it comes to you.
He called on you first as a child, memories you can't ever seem to recall. Multiple times as a teen where you maintained a smile outside closed doors. Walking into adulthood he left you holding your ripped out heart, curled up on the cold floor in the downstairs bathroom as your roomates could hear you sobbing. Startled, you put the teapot down and grab a cloth. Wiping up the counter, slowly you recall sweet liquids on your lips, a knife, blackout nights, pills, blood on the floor, phone calls you shouldn't have made, men you couldn't look at. The times your chest had imploded and your stomach twisted. The times numbness flooded, just like the cup on the counter.
You run to your bedroom and pull out the small top right drawer of your dresser. Rummaging around you find all the signatures Death has left on your dance cards through the years, and a sudden recognition of a person you couldn't ever identify in the background of old photographs framed on your bookshelf.
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Sometimes he shows up handsome, wearing a sleek black Italian suit, holding an empty caffé that he just finished at the bar. Checking his pocket watch that never ticks, connected to a gloriously long shiny chain as he steps off the curb, not aware of danger, dangling a tiny scythe on his keys hooked to his belt loop, like he's late for the show. But, he always knows when to turn towards you. Enticing, cutting his eyes at you that drip with desire. His eyes. Those lips. The way they curl on one side when he catches your eye, always... tempting and teasing, making your heart beat longingly.
He knew the way you’d respond to him, he always knew, he was exciting, thrilling, invigorating. Making you beg for more, to be closer to him, because through him you became more alive. You often teased him on rock walls, scaling mountains, in rapids, seeing just how far you could push him before he’d ravage you.
He would take you on long walks home slowly carving intricate pictures on your heart and mind that couldn't be sanded down or puttied over... still bleeding years and decades later. You thought the sutures and bandaids would have helped, that healing would have taken place, but every now and then you look up and scurry around looking for another dressing to patch the wound that you thought was an old hidden scar.
Arriving like a twisted joke. He shows up when dreams are abruptly torn from your grasp leaving a gaping bullet wound through your chest. When you are betrayed by a friend and you feel the knife enter your back. When relationships end, as you were still holding onto the hand that slipped out of yours with your last knowledgeable breath that night as you drowned. When your health, or the health of a loved one, comes crashing down around you tearing you limb from limb, drawn and quartered. Or, when you were burned at the stake for something misunderstood; grilled over assumptions and perceptions that were never yours to hold. Consequences of the indecision that slowly stripped away the ability to truly choose, as you sway back and forth from the noose, never stepping all the way in to truly experience something fully.
He is in the almosts, the nevers, the moments you look around and realize you're lost and alone. Betrayed and abandoned. Standing there bare and empty being interrogated and slaughtered, simultaneously experiencing the boundless overflowing beauty of life.
You recognize him in pictures and songs, and still look over at his cloak when you pass it. The darkness feels lighter on the chair in the corner. He still hasn't been around for you to return it. But, he always comes around.
Death arrives on a random Tuesday in a million forms.
