# Dead Alive I am dead, yet I live. My pulse keeps its rhythm— a habit, perhaps, or the memory of blood. The mirror shows me still standing, still breathing, but something has slipped through the spaces between heartbeats. I wear my body like borrowed clothes, familiar but never quite fitting. When I speak, I hear myself as though listening to someone else's voice. The world spins on. Birds sing their small songs. I watch the light change the color of walls. None of it touches me now. I am a door left open to a room no one enters. Wind passes through. Dust settles on the sill. Yet I rise each morning. My hands move. My feet follow. I perform the gestures of the living so convincingly that even I believe them sometimes. But in the spaces between— in the hollow of my chest, in the silence before sleep, in the moment before the next breath— I know. I am both the candle and the flame it lost, burning still, burning still, with a light that casts no shadow.

You will find me in every woman who comes after.
You will want me and you will ache for me.
You will dream of me every day under God's sky,
but without me you will wither into age!

You will see me in every pair of eyes.
The ache will burn until it consumes you.
You will be deceived, yet it will seem to you
that your heart has lived greatly through me!

You will dream of me and wake drenched in sweat,
waking into a harsh and ordinary world.
You will want to understand with me
in some other life…what fidelity means!

And you will drown yourself in work and wine.
And you will try to erase my image.
But in the evening, alone in your room,
you will find the pain will not relent!

And not because I am some otherworldly beauty.
And not because I am a rare woman.
But because I kindled that spark in you
that no other flame has ever matched!

Because I held that power over you,
the kind that steals men's very souls.
Because I gave you that burning desire,
which no one else could ever give!

I am not the one that every man chases after,
but I am the woman you have dreamed of,
the one you know how to love,
the one you burned to possess!

You will curse me, but you will love me still, and
search for me desperately in another's face,
and you will struggle to kill these memories,
but I will live in you, right here!

When you fail to cherish someone in time,
when you do not know love,
you will have to carry that weight forever,
consoling yourself with memory in your last years!

I will haunt your mind; I will burn through you.
I will kindle fire from these memories.
You will dream of my touch upon your skin.
You will burn yourself in this fire!

And you shall not sleep, and God grant you no peace;
for squandering all that you had!
A man is a man who does not perish from love!
But is he alive when he is already dead?