Liberties

God has not shown me in nightdreams and no sorcerer has divined where my last day will overtake me and how my end will look, that I may know. Whether in my tent, on my couch, I will die with all my cherished close to me, every one of them camped mutely around me, sentries of love and sanctity at my bed, who will count my last breaths in the bosom of my God as one would count coveted attainments. Or, scorned and despised, in the ire of God and man, hated by my fellows and a fugitive from my family, on a pile of straw in a forsaken cell I will emit my vacant and impure soul. Nobody will attend my spirit’s release and no hand will shudder over my snuffed-out eyes. Or perhaps, in my hunger and my thirst for life and its delicacies, with loathing in my soul, in spite of the Creator and his wrath, I will kick away His gift and like hurling a soiled shoe from my foot hurl my soul at His feet. Or maybe my soul will wait long and longer until it rots, from too much expectation and too much silence, and spill upon the earth in my bitterness as I vomit it like blood from my heart. Or it might drop like a pearl with my last teardrop, the light of the world within it, trembling, and shine many generations later for eyes that never beheld me. Or perhaps like a butterfly, dancing and leaping around the flame, my soul will depart. Or like the flame itself, before it consumes the wax, in the throes of its death my soul will flutter and flicker and smoke for many days, an optical illusion, until suddenly it plummets into a dark abyss