I know what it is to be dead

Life is hard right now. For some of us, our living is a contested fact, a wild situation made only worse by the fact that those of us fighting to live have had to fight so hard to find the life they need to live. Rebirth implies death, necessitates it, and I can tell who has faced their own mortality and who has not.

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I know what it is to be dead
For I have been dying since birth.
Incessant alarms performing
Necromancy on this sullen corpse,
In infancy, consciousness 
Broke my brittle will into dust,
At the end of my adolescence 
An abortive attempt at ending
Has made everything since
Feel like existing on borrowed time,
I knew I was dead as soon as
I finally started to live,
A monolithic knowledge sat
In my dormant mental recesses 
Finally struck me as the body blow
A tidal wave of sadness,
Come child, I speak to myself,
I will hold you with this care
The care you were without,
Come young adult, I say,
Looking myself in the eye
For the very first time I see
These are the mistakes I should 
Have been making at your age,
For my only failure was to 
Try to not fail at all,
I know what is it to be dead
I know how it feels to be dying
What it means to be grieving yourself 
And to dig your own grave,
And now I know that my living
Has required all these things too
That change requires difference 
The change requires loss, 
I must leave behind my rotting parts
For I know they are making me ill,
In their leaving they will be dead
And my living requires their death
In their passing I will find grief 
And in that space I have found myself,
So I know what it is to be dead,
Now I have given myself life
I know what it means to live.

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