everything dies in the end.

I'm tired of everything dying
The grass
The sequoias
Easter Island
Never rising again
It is nearly midnight when she takes
Her last rattled breath
As if she needed to finish one more day
Well

Cancer is formidable
As a diagnosis
An opponent
A death
I held her statuesque bones in a hospital bed for all of February
For March, like a Lion.
her dying body carrying a larger than life voice and toobigtoobigtooloudtoomuch
Laughter
Even as the marrow is replaced
With nothingness
I learn of my grandmother's sickness on the same day I learn that Jenn dies

See fires have raged and
What is Unfair has already happened
And even redwoods uproot and turn over in the hundred year storms that come faster, now
Her voice got toosmalltoodistant
Her breathing tooshallowtoorattled
A battle cry

I'm tired of everything dying
Cattle and vegans alike
The whole planet is aged and eaten
And eating

Us too

I'm tired of everything dying
And of the gaping wounds death leaves behind
We do not go slowly
We do not go fast enough
It takes 100 Dying Days to be done with this
And even still someone has to plan the service, write the obituary, close the back account, wish for more time.

It is the next morning when the news breaks and then, I have carried this knowledge for hours. She's gone, she's gone, she's gone, she's gone. The church bells on 5th Street sing it out. The ticking of my kitchen clock is her full name. The lines in the corners of my eyes are deeper. Her laughter lives there.
But it is mostly aching pain.

Aged. Not eating. Hungry. Not nearly old enough.

We are all dying, you know, she laughed
In the face of weeks to months
And then gave weeks the best shot she could to die well. Fuck.
The grass and the sequoias.
The heartbeat.
That toobigtoobigtooloudtoomuch body and voice
I am tired of everything dying and
Never rising again.