Death in My Bedroom By Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

I welcome death into my bedroom.

I look into its dark vacant eyes.

I open up the curtains and allow the sun

and shadows in as well.

I look at death’s icy gaze

and offer it a white sheet.

I tell death to wrap itself in the white sheet.

I ask death to leave my bedroom

because its presence made it too cold.

The walls feel like ice crystals.

Death knows when it will take me.

There is no need to share my bed with it.

I have no reason to be its friend.

Who could stand such a cruel thing?

Outside I hear the crackling of leaves.

It must death’s feet burning space.

My body is in a sweat, with a bad fever,

and I struggle to breathe.

This cannot be my death sentence.

I need answers to a question I have yet to form. I cannot understand what life wants.

I sit in silence and contemplation.

I sleep in this bedroom as death lingers.

It must be death that is causing me

to choke on words that will not come out.

There is an obscure being in the corner

of my room when the lights are dim.

I ask death to leave my bedroom again.

Together, we are like oil and water.

Death finally leaves in a rage. It leaves me 

with a wound that does not bleed.

I find myself alone in meditation about

life and death. I do not believe I could

face the world without the one I love

who is out of reach. I prefer to be alone

when I doubt myself. I believe there is

more to life than what I know about it.

Luis is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poems have appeared in Fearless, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Unlikely Stories.