Didn’t you say we’d die before
we reached the end of our stories?
What a page-turner, you’d say, each time 
I described a new shell I found
at my feet in the surf, or the song I heard
fly down from a bird too far gone
in the clouds to be seen. Tell me another,
I’d say—a joke or a lie always pouring
from that big voice you carried so well,
like trees throwing the wind, and we’d 
laugh until we remembered to breath.
I’ll be late showing up to my own funeral,
you said—a prophecy, a spell, a dare
for whoever was listening.