To Die

I will accompany you, that I vow. The pledge: to accompany the dying one, and all the way to death. To sleep on the floor, beside the bed. I will be with you, then when you die. How could it be otherwise? How could I be elsewhere?

I come upon you sleeping. You are asleep, not, I know, already dead. Asleep: I see you breathing, and know with relief, that you are still here. Here: but are you here? Yes: there is something of you left. Something, though you are starved to nothing. Something – but what of you is left? What – of you – that is not already death?

Dying, to die: there’s still enough of you. You wake up; I saw your eyes moving behind your eyelids, and now – you’ve woken up; I can see you. I see – and those are still your eyes. Still them, your eyes. One day, I worry, they will not be your eyes, and death will look at me. I worry: one day, it will be death that regards me, death itself that sees death in me.

To die: will I die away from myself? Will I die as you die, away, away from what you are? Because I see death creeping over your body. Death is nearly here. Your chest rises and falls. You breathe, but death is close. And I know, at this moment, that my death is not mine. My death – not mine. I will die like you, one day. One day – dying, and death will open in my eyes.