Living Will by Brenda Shaughnessy
If I make a decision now, but die
before enacting it, does my last decision stay
in limbo, alive without a body?
Or does it die with me, becoming no decision,
undoing my last choice on this earth as if
I had already died before I died?
And what if my last decision was: I would like to die.
Does that make a point or abandon it: my life
a question with no mark, answered before asked?
And if so, and I was already, in this way, dead
before I made my last decision,
how long was I dead before that?
Wanting to die, deciding or not to die, already lost
and gone, irrelevant not only in the last moment
but having diminished all along,
not knowing when the diminishment began.
Perhaps it never began; I was always
lessening, losing, disappearing,
from my first breath, imperceptibly at first.
Then, not at but near the end: canceled in totality.
It would be good to die
before comprehending this, because to know
life was like that—who could live with it,
even for a moment, knowing. Art by Claudia Deneault Robillard Recommended listening: Honey Bones - Dope Lemon
Settle - Lonelyspeck
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