There are no more metaphors for death

There are no more metaphors for death, no analogies, I have used them all up and so here I am with death sliding down my sides like a street weary slum rat, all claws and teeth. Gnawing at my sides with saliva, rabies, plague. Death infects me, death is pathological, death is deadly, death menaces me with memories of itself in happier times. It tries to make me look away from my sides now that are torn bloody maggot riddled. Death whispers itself into your ear, but it is never you that dies, no that’s not deaths game. Death is a slum rat, a torn down and manky worm but it takes steady bites at the sides of your being. The surrounds, the bits that you need to feel whole but not the bits you need to stay alive. Death doesn’t go for your jugular. Death is a ringworm, a burrowing tick. It takes your blood, until it’s gone. And I think it’s gone.

I have nine years of words for death, nine long slow years. deaths syllables have well rounded my tongue. Death’s punctuated, savagely between the lines of my eyes. I have seen the words death likes to use, I have seen death use them again and again. Death has seasonal whims. summer rips death out of my mouth in a violent belch. Summer sucks up death into grassy banks and too blue skies, memories are clearer when the sky leaves the ground, when the stars make room for us again.

Death would be an ample administrator, death never misses an opportunity. Death markets itself well. Name me a writer who hasn’t written about it, name me a human unmoved by it. Death has all the right connections, death speaks through the ages, death is timeless. Death goes well with lavender.

I can think of death when I’m lonely, it has compartments for whimsy. No one ever told death a thing or two because death knows everything, it has seen your insides, met your puss and sores. Death fucks you, you’ve felt it. Or at least you will, that’s what death says when its feeling angry, when death is sad it holds your hand it rests its rodent head on your shoulder, and it sighs long romantic sighs.

I have hated death for nine long years. Found death and killed it, with machine guns, machetes, the bricks holding up my shelves. I have smashed death, watched the gore seep to a congealing puddle on my floor. But death is no slave to circumstance, there is nothing death will not enjoy. It will wearily pull up its trouser leg and piss in your face. Believe me, get used to death because it will never leave. Words like dog shit stick resolutely to you, death put them there, and they always say, I am sorry for your loss.