WHAT WOULD KILL ME

From the very beginning I knew exactly what would kill me. Regardless, I convinced myself that it could be anything. I convinced myself that what would kill me would be made up of any of the random things that would kill anybody else. When I walked my dog around the neighborhood, I saw what would kill me hovering in the trees. When I swam in the ocean, I felt what would kill me nudging at my ankles. At the grocery store: behind the cereal boxes. I grew old like this, seeing what would kill me on my dinner plates, in the rabbit cages. I grew old distracting myself from what I knew to be true. And then, just like I knew it would, it came late one night, booming with slowness, from the fjords.

from Fjords Vol.1 by Zachary Schomburg