Death Rings a Bell

Death rings a bell and I open the door to the entrance way. For the first time, I know what loss looks like. I know what loss feels like. I was ten years old and though I already knew that we were never given a forever. I just didn’t know what endings looked like, how endings felt. Until I lost my Mema.

Now death rings a bell because it’s all too familiar. It has entered now too many times uninvited. I look up from a book and all of a sudden, Death is making us a pot of tea, because It knows that I’ll need it…after the news.

Death explains to me that it will no longer ring my doorbell for entry, by now I should know its feel, it’s look, its words, its subtle cringing. Death says I should smell its scent, that of old roses and fresh melancholy.

Death has a confident swag, a secure way of being. It knows that it will always be this forevermore, the end of a beginning of the circle and cycles of life. It knows that it will never be like us, wondering what it should be, searching the forest floors and beaches for a purpose. Death will always know who it is, and what it came to be.

Unlike We, unlike us, unlike me.