I sense you
I feel your long pale fingers
As they touch and take the lives around me
Indeed, I sense the coldness of your touch
The killing frost that you are to all who could grow

Twenty-five years ago
I learned of your path into my body
You either didn’t think me a listener as you whispered
In that Reiki Master’s ear or else figured I wouldn’t feel her
Remorse when she recognized your energies entwined with mine

You fool
I had heard your dirges over a decade before
When we played together in my room late at night
A cord tied tightly ‘round my neck
As you patiently waited for my feet to step off and into your arms
Even before you seduced Mom with promises of release
As “How Long” and “When Will I See You Again”
Sang questions that I alone answered aloud to both myself
And you in the crumbling bunker of my adolescence

You didn’t scare me then
As instead the living called to action by The Angels
Forced me so deep into hell that I then begged with my razor
For you to escort me to my ancestors

As a child of nine thirteen years earlier
You caught me off-guard just once
Because then you were just something that happened
To people on TV named King and Kennedy, not Higham

You broke into my life a little at a time back then
Stealing Saturday afternoons and chess games from me
A secret companion Mom shared only after you had come and gone
On Mother’s Day as if her not mentioning you until after you stole Dad
Might make you forever disappear

I sense you
In the faces of a friend’s child
Those who ask me for prayers and energy
On Facebook
In the news
In my waking world
In my dreams or
In the future wrinkled faces
Of my children

I feel the bones the lives the families that you will shatter
As I walk among the ruins you’ve created
My tears and my grief are not for you
Even as I will continue to sense
Who you will only touch and who you will take
And how you will finally take me
But I will never again fear you
Or again deceive myself
Into believing you should
Into persuading you must
Embrace me before your time

© Copyright 2017 by John David Higham. All rights reserved.

Photo: Death (August 21, 2017)