Incredulous

So how's it taste now? Lips on the barrel.

So sweet. The gun in my mouth. Only bullets to swallow.

Gulping down dying like it's mine. Always has been. And now at last I assert my ownership.

Tell you I am alive enough to let it go. Have seen enough to know what I would keep. And what I'd discard. Given the choice.

It's just one bullet. The shatter of the discharge is most frightening. But it's only just a sound. And we are images. Portraits stalled in midstroke. Knives caked with the colors we always wanted to be.

Turning the easel over. Coaxing the bottom of the canvas. No stroke closer to nor further from to what those outlines had portended.

They were only sketches anyway.

Kill this marathon. Admit. There is no winner.

Only starting guns lying so loud. And broken tapes offering no prizes.

There's no ash left to swallow. But still it burns. The disease pressing down like a heavy iron. Pushing all those wrinkles out.

Until.

Nothing remembers.