Alert

If the only things you have practiced 
are busyness and worry, 
you will not die peacefully.* 

If the only way your body knows 
is to do and do more, 
you will die hands tied 
by your own delusions of importance.

Death will hollow out your cheeks 
and you will be the fool getting botox. 

Death will design a scavenger hunt of your very last memories, 
and you will refuse to play. 

Death will stride up your driveway, jangling your keys on a rusted chain  
and you will draw the curtains, pretending you’re not home.


*Except in the not-so-rare event that you develop one of mankind’s many demented diseases, 

in which case it’s a toss up whether you die, as they say, “pleasantly confused” or in holistic desperation.