When she found out she was dying,
She left him.
He asked an obvious why.
"It might be alright to live this way," she said,
"But it ain't no way to die."

She wondered if death was like other things,
If practice made perfect and such.
She'd practiced dying a little each day,
But nobody'd noticed much.

She held her breath as long as she could.
Her body forced her to breathe.
But the next day she fell asleep holding it
And woke in the depths of a dream.

Dying is holy.
It ain't like living.
It can't be maligned or defamed.
You can live cheap or wrong or a lie,
But you can't die that way.

-jenn