What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
terror fright
alarm panic
death inside death so
moving
zombielike shuffling
swish swish scrape
the zoetrope clicking by around
my death in life eyes pictures of
life daily unlived
exhumation skin peels reveals
cocooning in fat and aversion
love stories appear and melt away
in dreams and disillusion
dissolution
like rain realization
dawns that still small voice
leeringly whispers then shouts
you’re dying
Did god leer over me with a magnifying glass
to see what I’d do
time ticks on
a seedling pushes
up
slowly
2023 diane o’leary
Diary of an American 
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