one day I almost died

It was a strange reminder,
a sudden recollection of the past.

For so long, I had lived under the shadow of death,
at that crucial time,
the confrontation of mortality was
face to face
scan to scan
day to day
breath to breath.

It shaped my whole being for a while.

I tossed it off glibly,
gladly,
in a way,
as soon as that hypothetical threat passed.

But it haunted me,
colouring my view a little darker,
a little greyer,
like the twilight when a storm's approaching.

Somehow,
somewhere,
sometime,
that tension wore off.

I haven't thought for some time now
how close I was to death,
how far I was from death,
how ever second,
every minute,
we all draw closer and closer
and yet remain exactly as far away as before.

Other cares have crowded in,
smaller in a way,
why should any of them matter
in comparison to the final embrace
of black isolation,
howling rooms,
never-ending silence.

But it's not simply the fact
that my firm conviction
(at least on Tuesdays, some Friday afternoons, and maybe one or two other times every week)
in the resurrection of the dead,
and the life everlasting,
amen,
has grown in stature and solidity
since those days.

But that my natural, human forgetfulness,
ability to be distracted,
failure to remember every day,
drags me further and further away
from old scabs I've stopped picking at,
until one day,
I brush against the old place
and realise

the scar is gone.