* SO IT WAS WRITTEN.

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isn’t  this  what  you          wanted   ━━

a   muzzle   between                your   teeth, gun      smoke        in                your    eyes,

the  taste     of  copper on   the                         tongue, the  smell  of        iron         in the air.

it  is  as  they  say; love  is  like              violence:

there  will  always  be blood  on  your  hands                 by  the  end.

ii.      but how? death is the end,          not the journey, and I am no cat.          I do not have nine lives—          only one.

iii.      he smiles, and it is sharp; cruel.           I realize — too late — it is a knife,           unsheathed. the messenger of           my first death.

iv.      “the first of many,” he asserts.           was that a prediction, or a promise?           better not to ask; knowledge itself,           is its own kind of death.

v.       father was right.

          dying is the same as anything else:           you get better at it with experience.

vi.      but it doesn’t get any easier, crawling           and clawing your way out of the dirt.           not the kind you can see or smell,

          but oh, you can feel it. it’s impossible           not to drag up grave soil with you           when your body is a cemetery.

vii.     eventually you learn           life is made of little deaths,           like a burden, growing.

viii.    death doesn’t scare humanity;           it’s life — living, that terrifies us           and we turned it into a rehearsal,           a stage.