Today I Thought About My Death and Was Sad, 2026

Today, I thought about my death

and was sad,

which is new.

I have carried death like a folded receipt in my back pocket

since childhood,

creased, casual, inevitable,

a transaction already approved.

I have said,

Let it come willingly on a number of occasions,

I have lived with my chest open,

with nothing hidden in drawers,

no secret ledgers,

no unpaid emotional debts.

I have loved my ambitions like bright machinery,

slept clean,

woken ready,

told the truth even when it blistered.

I have never feared the curtain.

I have practiced my bow with a grin.

Death and I had an understanding,

we nodded at each other across the room.

Someday, sure.

Of course.

That’s the arrangement.

But today,

I dozed on the couch,

like an ordinary man with ordinary sunlight on his face having worked too many hours,

and found myself sixteen heartbeats from extinction,

in a hospital bed,

with the halo of finality humming,

and she was there.

Ivy.

Sitting in the chair beside me

like a cathedral disguised as a woman.

And I knew,

knew in the marrow-deep way dreams sometimes hand you truth,

without anesthesia,

this was the last conversation.

No drama.

No violins.

Just the unbearable mathematics

of one more sentence

and then nothing.

And I had to say goodbye.

To her.

To the way she says my name, my Beau,

like she is discovering it.

To the unperformed honesty in her eyes.

To the ordinary miracle of Publix buttercream frosting.

To the life that had just begun unfolding like a reckless promise.

And I woke up

with grief already in my throat

for something that hasn’t happened.

What is this?

It’s always taken a lot for me to cry,

I’ve taken beatings and willingly walked back for more,

I’ve chose laughter to subvert it,

however I’m crying now and it’s fiction.

I’m crying now and it’s fiction.

I have stared at the void without blinking.

I have walked through death and collapse

like a man studying architecture,

noting the stress points,

rebuilding the beams.

But this,

this is different.

This is the understanding

that someday there will be a last look.

A last touch.

A last half-finished sentence.

And I do not consent.

I, who have consented to everything inevitable,

do not consent to losing her.

Is this what love is?

This insurgency against entropy?

This sudden desire to bargain with physics?

I thought I was free

because I feared nothing.

Now I am terrified

because I have something.

Today, I thought about my death

and was sad,

not for me.

For her.

For the unfinished conversation.

For the coffee tomorrow morning

that might one day

arrive without me, or worse,

without her.