Mortality

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I would trade forever for a single breath pressed against the hush of my daughter's sleep, for the rise and fall of her tiny chest, for the peace that wraps her like a secret the world has not yet discovered. I would give my last heartbeat for the first tender kiss of love, for the moment before the fall, before the knowing, before time leaves its shadow across what is pure. Let me die in the glow of golden laughter, wrapped in the voices of friends who still see me as I was, who still remember the boy I used to be. Let me taste one more strawberry, sun-warmed and sweet, juice running down my fingers, a stolen moment of summer that dissolves too quickly on the tongue but lingers forever in memory. Let me fade with the smell of rain on hot pavement, with the hush of waves pulling back into the dark, with the soft weight of a hand in mine, neither holding too tight nor letting go. Let me go beneath the vast black ocean at night, where the waves whisper their secrets to the sky, where the stars tremble on the water's surface, where the whole world feels endless and I am small enough to belong to it. Take my years, strip them from my body like autumn wind through trees if only I can linger a moment longer in the warmth of coming home, in the silence of understanding, in the breath where music becomes memory, where time forgets to move forward and I can simply be. I do not fear the end. Only the thought that I will leave before I have lived enough of these perfect, terrible, achingly beautiful moments that make life worth dying for.