Letter from Death

To the One Who Should No Longer Be Breathing (Day 6/30)

To the One Who Should No Longer Be Breathing,

I must begin by admitting the unthinkable. I forgot you.
Do you understand the absurdity of that? Me. The eternal hand that never trembles, never falters, never loses count. And yet here you are, walking, speaking, breathing, while your name has already been inked and sealed in the Book of Departures.

You should have stopped three nights ago, between the second and third stroke of the clock, in that quiet moment when your heart stuttered and decided, against all decree, to continue. I should have been there. I wasn’t.

Do you know what happens when I am late? The world stutters. A sparrow forgets to fall. A candle burns longer than it should. Something ancient in the machinery of endings grinds against itself. And I, the keeper of stillness, feel it like rust in my ribs.

I do not forgive myself for this.
You were marked. You were measured. You were meant to be mine already.
And yet my hand faltered. I turned away for a breath, and somehow, impossibly, you kept yours.

So I write this not out of malice, but necessity. You are an imbalance. A tear in the quiet fabric I have spent millennia stitching closed. I can hear it widening with every one of your borrowed breaths.

Read these words to the end, if you dare.
When the last mark of ink meets your eye, when the final word sits inside your mind, I will arrive.
No more letters. No more delays.

Finish this page, and I will stand behind you.
We’ll correct what was missed.

— Death