Death
Last night as I lay with my head on my lover's chest and he braided my hair, I had a sudden realization.

"I want to die," I murmured.

"What??" he said.

And I did.

It was a moment complete in its prefection. The utter satisfaction of an evening spent in nothing but closeness and conversation was all around me.

I thought, 'I know good people. I have good friends. We are good things together. This is all I need.'

I'm "not quite" twenty. Seven more days. I thought, somehow, that I would die doing something strangely supernatural or in a freak semi-truck accident before the last day of my nineteenth year. In fact, Sian and I made a pact that we wouldn't live to see twenty. The thought of living past nineteen just seemed to make our lives so anti-climatic. So... normal.

Now she's in Japan, well into her twentieth year and I'm here living out my last week waiting until the pages turn over and I'm no longer within the stage of life where I can be the self-declared spriteling I discovered all those years ago on the playground. I can always have the wonder for life, the childish fascination with silly things, but I can't always have being a sub-adult. That's going away. And so I'll spend the next week counting down and dropping little hopes off of the bridge to watch them swim ont the other side and float out of sight down the river. Playing pooh-sticks with my dreams.

I'll spend the next week wondering where that semi is.

I should have died last night. In a way, perhaps I did. I just let go, forgot that I wasn't really doing homework or accomplishing anything, let go of that terminal drive which may cause me chronic illness or mental breakdown before term's end, let go of hate and fear and forgave myself for ever loving or despising anyone. I was snow falling on water, watching my own life drift into layers and melt away into the great everything.

I said, "this is perfect."

I should have died in that moment because I knew that in waking, I would lose that feeling. I should have died, perhaps to have been reborn... maybe in my own life, maybe even in today. But I didn't.

Instead I whiled away the night until my body screamed for sleep, dreamt dreams of work I hadn't done and woke up feeling beaten and depressed. Is there any hope for a girl who wants to do everything but can't find anything she likes to do? Is there any hope for a girl who can't stand living quietly but whose only goal is to just BE? Is there any hope for me?

Let the sun stay out a few days longer, maybe I can find time again to die in bliss.

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[SIDE NOTE: I have sacrificed goats and small children to Asphalta, goddess of the road, so that my embarrasing clutch driving may not be repeated in the proportions that it was last night. Eheh... heh. I can drive, really! And really, I actually know how to shut off the windshield wipers... and really... um... AAH! Too much pressure! AK! Let's never mention this again.]