Reality

This morning I woke up and knew exactly when I was going to die.

It had nothing to do with cigarettes or tumors, or any

doctor's half-fiddle "three weeks to live" prophesying,

no, I wasn't high the night before,

no, I wasn't drinking,

I just woke up, and it was there,

buried in my gut like the gift of speech itself-

the knowledge of my death, inexplicable,

paper-weighted down by a certainty like gravity,

I simply knew the exact date and time

that this frail human shell of mine

would expire.

And I suppose I should've been terrified;

wits clean blazed out of my skull by now seeing the

brief flame of this mortality, but

I wasn't.

I guess I'm a glass-half-full kinda girl.

So, instead of running around like a headless chicken,

I made myself a good hearty breakfast in the kitchen and thought-

this should be a cause for celebration.

So here's a toast to the occasion!

That every year there'll be a day that

instead of birth, I'll celebrate my death,

and in the dying, recognize

that in the life that I had lived,

I'd not wasted a single breath.