Childlike Superstition

Sometimes as a child
I'd cower in my bed,
Fearing something mild
Would leave me bloody dead.

A monster maybe,
Or possibly a pathogen.
A rabid rabbit with rabies,
Or a cyclone's suck and spin.

I feared the end of everything,
The night's king,
The black thing that would take me away,
Fixed in its gaze,
Stopped 'till the end of days.

I feared my last thought,
Not the idea
That there would be none thereafter,
But the fact
That the last thought would be wasted, knowing it was the last.

I feared how many thoughts
I would waste
Thinking of the black thing's embrace:
The great cessation
Of being, by the apparation of seeing.

Now wiser am I than a kid,
Of these deathly fears
I may be rid
To stop my rush of tears.

If I survive to thrive
A day again,
I may that day be not alive,
It doesn't matter when.

And when I'm done,
So too will be
Every single one
Of my worries.

But, most prominently,
My fear is gone because
I've already been seen.
I'm a man lying under a guillotine.
I'm a woman with a cancerous spleen.
Nowhere to go, I wait on death row
For my execution.
I've been presumed;
Like you, no hope in resolution,
I sit calmly,
Doomed.