Alive

I got to thinking, today, when I was sitting out on the porch watching the rain whip the dirt away from the world. I was just sitting there, humming to myself and thinking those cute little nothings we so love, when all of a sudden, a shadow crept into my brain, sort of sluggishly, if you know what I mean. It sort of drug its feet and sloshed about, not quite a full thought, but hell, it was close. Then it slammed into the glass walls of my brain and I jumped just a little at the sound of the collision.

What's it like to be dead?

I turned it over, a little, the way you hold up the bottom of a pancake to see if it's cooked enough to flip. Sort of... tentatively, I suppose. Just checking if I was really getting the whole picture. Well, the pancake was browned, and I dove in.

Every vein and nerve sizzled, and I watched my head explode from thirty feet away. Third person-like. It's hard to explain.

I wondered, what's it like to lie down and watch the grass and the trees take root above you? Can you taste the freshwater rain that pounds all over you? Can you feel the maggots eating away everything that you were in this world? It's gotta be awful cold, becoming a nothing like that.

And while I shuddered at the thought, a better one slunk it's way into my brain.

What's it like to be alive?