Prayer to Death

Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved. - Mark Twain

I awake from my prayer to death. Feel the cold black marble burn my skin. How long was I on the bathroom floor? Probably only minutes. My joints detest. It had been hours.

My conscience resists this moment of clarity, wants to be brought down again into the picture-frame of insanity where wanting (no, needing) death is allowed.

I want to believe that no one understands. None of the doors around me have handles. Is it the Devil who feeds my self pity into such a cocoon that it's hard to break my head free of the sticky swirls? Or is it the Devil who cuts open the cocoon so that I can remember the world around me?

by E. M. Soos