.

I love toying with

the keys to my demise –

So much so

that every glimpse I have

of the end of my life

is enough to make me

bare my teeth

and challenge it,

to laugh hysterically

and offer up wild 

chants and hymns,

punctuated with profanity.

It is not my youth,

nor is it an inflated sense

of invincibility

that makes me stretch

the elastic of life and

death.

It is an unabashed desire

to suck all the juice I can

out of this existence,

and when I have had my fill

to fling myself unapologetically

into the mouth of Never,

knowing that ‘could have’

‘should have’

and ‘would have’

went in the other direction.

Rachel J. Clark