I think too much

I think of death, a lot. To much. Tho i am still young, i do. When the light slips through my curtains at dawn so very quiet, uninvited but impossible to ignore.

It finds me when the morning rests against my face,

when the world is still, quiet and my dog is folded perfectly into me,

her warmth rising and falling like something forever

and yet not.

I think of how one day her small body will return to the same earth

we press our feet into without thinking,

Without thinking of the time we may have

Its when I look at old photographs

how the air inside them looks softer,

how time seemed wider then, slower somehow.

And I wonder when it narrowed.

When it began to feel so quick

I may live In the between of my memories and my life, that person I once knew, that place i once saw and that feeling i had when i was just a little girl and i felt a life full, long, how growing up was just a thought and never something to happen to me?

Its when i see old people, I feel such a pain

did they once wake like I do?

Did they once lie in bed wondering about death at 18?

Did they once think,

“One day I will be the one with silver in my hair”?

And then sometimes I wonder

how very thin the line is between this morning and the next.

How we rise each day assuming we will return to our pillows at night.

How quietly uncertain that promise really is.

It’s that I feel how temporary everything is.

How love makes things ache because it cannot hold them forever, i could not hold him forever.

And maybe that ache is proof

that I am here,

that I am paying attention,

that I understand, even just a little,

how rare it is to be alive at all