Death
Death, why do you come and go,
teasing the blood of an imploring soul?
Why do you linger beneath my window
like a black cloak in the autumn rain,
your pale eyes full of centuries and sins,
your mouth sweet with the last roses of September?
You came in October. I was young,
when the clocks still donned their golden faces,
and the earth was round with possibility—
every flower believed itself eternal.
You didn’t take my innocence at once.
You gathered it slowly,
petal by petal,
as the wind undressed a dying day,
and a raven carried the bright fragments
of an orphaned dawn
into the mouth of the woods.
Even then, I still dreamed—
until you entered the garden
of my sleep
and buried its small, luminous animals
beneath the roots of your winter.
Even then, you left me hope.
Like a white sun tethered to a field of thorns,
like a candle burning in an abandoned shrine,
like the last red apple
clinging to a blackened tree.
And I grew—
a moon swollen with the tides of other lives,
a garden with room enough
for every wounded and wild creature.
But before the clock divided my life in two,
you came again.
You arrived a native to my anatomy—
and hope fell soundlessly,
like a magpie’s feather
upon the first frost.
Now you wander through my imagination,
your fingers stained with the pollen of dead flowers.
You trouble my compassion.
My empathy.
You whisper that goodness is a mask
worn by the hungry,
that tenderness is a fruit
concealing the worm inside its heart.
And I have grown so still
the ivy thinks I am a statue.
I am merely waiting for you now.
There is nothing I can be bothered with.
There is nothing I can hold.
There is nothing.
And yet—
here I stand,
with my ridiculous heart,
and my impossible devotion to the living.
I am the Magician,
my sorrow a thousand small suns.
I am the Hermit,
with one lantern
through a forest of extinguished stars.
And you, Death—
you are my Death.
The bruised gold of October.
A black goat standing motionless
among the graves of summer.
The raven’s throat,
black with the songs it will never sing.
And the gardens—
always heavy with desire
before the first frost.
Flowers open their mouths wider,
the earth grows fragrant with surrender.
The last bee staggers drunk
through the swollen hearts of dahlias.
Everything becomes unbearably beautiful
when it can no longer remain.
I know this.
I have walked beside you
through every season of my becoming.
And when the final roses bow,
when the magpies abandon the orchard,
when the clocks forget their hunger,
I will not mistake you for a king:
I lead you.
Marni Fraser
1027.2026
III:XXXV
Img| 2026
