night tripper

The fear finds me at the edge of a dream. A snake in the grass. It jolts me awake. Death. Dying. End of this life as I know it. I haven't felt this fear in a long time. Months, maybe even years.

I roll over in bed and rub my little dog's belly. He opens his eyes and looks at me, little shiny orbs illuminated by the street lamp outside. He licks his lips nervously. Does he feel it, too?

He will die one day, probably before me. I will cry and hold his small, limp body in my arms, and a part of me will die with him.

He must know of his own mortality. He has seen death. The crows, they must know it, too. Does it haunt them in the still hours of the night? Do they remember babies, mates, friends they have lost, and recognize that they, too, will one day lay forever still?

Yet there is something on the other side of this corporeal existence. I've never seen pearly gates or white robes or hellfires, but I have heard voices, have felt the comforting presence of loved ones who have long since left this world. I have dipped into an incomprehensible aether of egoless expanse, one beyond this heavy mortal experiment. The cosmos is too playful, too diverse, too wondrous to support something as boring as when you die you are dead and that's it.

But still I am afraid. This life, my life-- I have lived it for over forty years, yet only in these last few have I realized how badly I want it. I used to push through it. Some days I was ready for it to end. On the darkest days, I nearly snuffed it out myself. Funny to think how easily I could have. But it was a black hole. And then a big bang, fingers of light stretched out to limitless possibilities.

I want this life. I LOVE this life.

I can't imagine ever being ready to let it go.

_{All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.}