You’ve dreamed of leaving. Escape. Stage left to feel the air around you leaving, and the space around your lungs tightening, to just disappear without fading out.

How have you imagined it? How have you dreamed it was going to be? Peaceful or violent? How many times have you pretended? To die? Before today? How many lives or names have been forgotten or passed by? Erased? Moving along just going,

Forward? Energy is leaving and all life is dreaming.

Remember dying when you were young? How the doctor sunk you into the ice to reduce a fever after only a few months on Earth?

Or being ripped out of your mother’s womb through an incision in her belly? Your mother’s scar stands as proof and a reminder of your violent birth. You’ve been practicing how you were going to die since then. Haven’t you? You’ve been busy imagining it,

Worried and excited.

Killed by savages. Imperialists invade your settlement. You’ve fantasized yourself having past glory. You are of the invaders and the invaded. You are with the Roanoke and with the Taínos.

You as a guerilla being hunted by third world paramilitaries, that receive funding from the first world. You, a political dissident. The whole world after you. Assassinated after you become a leader of the machine like Kennedy, like Lincoln, like Malcolm X and Che.

A global corporate conspiracy of murder against your ideas and ideals. All after you.

But these have just been childhood games at dying. Playing war games and pretending to be a vampire sent to kill the Nazis. Some have called you morbid and called you dark for how you listened to Goth music and wore all black in your youth. Some say you are still just way too sad, way, way too sad.

But you know. You have always known. You know you love life. You know you are after life and have always been the only one that really wants to live. That wants to really live.

You are from and of the lonely lost dark empty, but it’s really not that empty or that lonely. And along the way all of your lost friends have helped to light the way.

You are “the only real nigga alive,” that’s how you remember yourself. Challenging life by playing at dying.

But reality is fading, and so is your ability to focus and concentrate. Everything becomes unclear, and nothing seems tangible or concrete anymore. You are starting to feel weak. You can barely hold yourself together.

Where are you? Who are you? With every second, everything becomes more and more just distant memories.

There’s blood running down your neck, a bullet hole in your head?

All masks removed, and no more layers to peel away at. Soon you will become pure, return to original being, away from this physical body and towards a higher form of energy.

You are not sad. You’ve always known this, death. And life. And then more death. And the cycle continues on endlessly.

You’ve always known that everyone you’ve ever known would one day die. And so with you, why should it be any different?

You start to think about what your family will do with your body. You don’t want doctors asking questions and examining once you’re gone. You’ve never wanted to be famous. Someone else can have another 15 minutes. The rest of the world can watch itself on television and leave you alone. You don’t want any fuss.

You just want your body dumped in some corner and allowed to rot and decompose until it returns to the Earth. Or have your body dumped into some ocean to be devoured by some animal or to be lost beneath the oceans in some dark abyss until becoming coral. All physical trace that you ever existed should disappear so that all that remains are memories, and even those should eventually fade. All that is left is how one is remembered and becomes immortal. But this is not about that, or about changing the world. This is about You.

And your killer? You don’t hate your killer. Your killer’s eyes etched into your last breaths like staring back from the reflection of an ancient memory. You don’t hate your killer. You understand. You know why this is all happening. You have given in to going under.

Maybe you have dreamed of a more heroic death and maybe you thought that you would go down in some kind of battle. And there’s always that little bit of doubt that this is just a cop out, and that there’s so much more one could have done. Gone down in battle? Down in the struggle? But maybe you are, if you consider all life is struggle.

So that in that sense, maybe, you can feel free and safe now. Maybe now, you will know angels. Maybe one of the people’s gods will be their waiting. You aren’t scared or insecure at least not any more so than usual. You actually have a smile accompanied with a small sense of relief. This isn’t so bad. You start thinking of sleep, and how good it will feel. Soon you’ll be under such a deep slumber that no life could ever wake you.

This isn’t so bad. You thought for sure that you’d have passed out by now though. Your shirt feels drenched. This could be so much worse though. So much worse with tears and screams trying to hold on to what’s left of life.

But not you.

You’ve imagined intolerable pain, but this does not hurt any more so than life. The shock has taken over, released adrenaline and dopamine into your body to numb the pain and all thoughts. Instead of pain you feel a sort of peace in the tension being released and removed from your body. Sort of like electric shocks flying slowly up and down your spine, creating a tingling sensation upon your brain.

Your body is starting to feel tired for much needed sleep and rest. Eyes keep getting more and more heavy. Your chest feels heavy, and all you can focus is on your slowing breath and heartbeat.

You start to think, “Finally some fucking peace and quiet.”

Some things are red, others feel gray, and suddenly all of your life, your hopes and fears fade to black, and you fall under.

You think of Kurdt Cobain, “It is better to burn out than fade away.” You think of Jim Morrison, “Retire now to your tents and to your dreams, tomorrow we enter the town of my birth, I want to be ready.” You think you think and then…