Perhaps we're not afraid of death But of our name plucked from the air, Of the silence that surrounds a thing ‘That's just no longer there. For we never really know ‘The lifespan of a single sound, How many years after a body stops A name will stick around. Porhaps it stretches generations Echoes one last time, then never, Until the space it filled’s replaced By its unknown loss forever. ‘Or maybe there's another way It lives after we fade, It's why we write our names' on books we own And all we've ever made It's a sliver of remembrance In a world prone to forget, ‘The taste of who we were On lips of one we've never met. ‘The hope they'll stumble on the stories We have loved, worn down with age, ‘That there they'll find what we had left: Our name upon the cover page And for just that fleeting moment It's as though wo've beaten death, ‘That in the whisper of those words We have taken one more breath. ~eh 2016 Brin anaon || thepoeticunderground.con