Death is no stranger to my quiet door;
We’ve danced this bitter waltz too many times before.
I wear the ledger written on my skin
A thousand battlefields where I dragged the win,
Decisions wrung from jaws of dark despair,
When breath was thin and nothing else was there.
Back then, the shadow bore a wolfish grin,
A howling gale that battered from within,
Merciless, unyielding, fierce, and fast,
A tyrant swearing this would be my last.
But time has tamed the terror in its stride;
The reaper slows, the world extends its tide.
The visits are less frequent now, it seems,
As mankind stretches out its waking dreams.
Yet peace has never taught my hands to yield.
I keep my armor polished, stand my field.
Let death remember how we used to spar;
I’ll match its shadow, match it scar for scar.
Let it approach prepared to trade the blow,
For I will fight to stay, as long as I can go.
And should it wander up, grown soft and slow,
Unfit to strike, too weary for the show
Let death beware the fire in my vein:
I’ll take its scythe, I’ll take the reaper’s reign,
And rewrite time so mortals long outlive
The fleeting inches that it used to give.
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