A Bouquet Of Lilies

By Maya Afonso

i thought of me

struggling to breathe in a hospital bed,

and for a second, hoped it was a vision of the future

and then unbidden,

asked who did these eyes, who saw me so broken, belong to

is it presumptuous of me?

to think that there may exist those who may miss me?

or selfish of me when I wish there were not?

perhaps,

no,

it is, and I know of it,

selfish of me to show so freely my affections for the ones I love,

when I await the peace I may finally feel with death,

it is selfish, and I know,

of how I grasp at their brightness, in the small pockets of life they afford me,

and then wait patiently in the shadows,

it is a life I suppose,

that with my love of metaphors,

i may describe as one akin to driving past streetlights under darkening skies

i am perhaps, too selfish

(and perhaps even more selfish for assuming it allows my first thought)

with the way that, I, for all my grasping of those little rays of light

shrink away in the face of the sun

maybe that pain, that I may cause,

is what keeps me breathing when I’d prefer not,

or maybe, I truly do not wish to die at all

and perhaps it is so,

that it is in these times when I feel less than human,

that I may be human at all

By Maya Afonso