take issue
with finitude,
but you'd have to be lonelier
than a genius
ever could be
to see how
everything
you're no longer doing
constitutes an ending—
and every ending
is a fortifying thread
in the terminal shroud
of death. But
for what it's worth
death—only
to these truly
godforsaken, ironically—
no longer reads
like the opposite
of life, but rather
like the inverse
of a messy and difficult
birth.