Again It Comes
(Donner, party of one…)

Again it comes for me.
An unrelenting hunter
that has chosen its prey,
and smells their blood.
And I prepare for another fight.
I have no choice now.
I have tried to elude,
but no matter my tactics,
I cannot hide.
It has always found me.
Always.
My will is weak
and my strength,
is fading.
I can feel myself
giving up.
So as I await my fate,
I reach to my heart.
As if awareness of its beating
will give me the strength I have lost.
Will give me
the desire
to fight again.
To come within a single breath
of being swallowed whole.
Only to turn that single breath
into a first breath
used to bellow out
my intention not only to survive,
but to Live!
But this heart’s beats are weak.
They give me no strength.
They merely remind
that a heart can only
take so much before,
no matter its will,
its beats, cease.
In desperation,
I fill my lungs
for another first breath.
Yet another roar into the face
of darkness itself
But all I can muster
is the pale breath of a sigh,
the trailing echo of fading sanity
lost easily to the wind
that even I can barely hear.
Now, in this deafening silence,
I feel the darkness closing in
and I realize that there’s
nothing else to be done
when even breathing
leaves you hopeless

© 2008 Michael Egidio Quigg