By Hennyei Buchem
1. The Grim Reaper's Journal
I am an archive
Of all the souls that have ever lived.
I exist camouflaged in the core of your shadow,
You will barely notice my presence.
I am bound to play the most brutal role
And it is inherent that my task is always due.
Mortal beings perceive me in varied ways;
Either I am the doomed envoy of the damned
Or the eventual threshold for eternal emancipation.
Whatsoever, I am not the one to juxtapose anyone's fate.
I am a wayfarer
Who manoeuvres via a surging faultline,
In a demarcation tangent between life and death.
I have tip-toed the monotonous route over and over again,
To the edges and beyond the realms of the living,
Leaving behind a footprint of apocalypse throughout.
I carry the sharpest, bloodiest, and heaviest scythe.
Furthermore, my ethereal mosaic heart is even heavier,
For it is not mine alone but a fusion of billions of hearts,
Chambered within mine, beating in an orchestral rhythm.
I am the witness
Of every unjust adversity that befalls on the face of the earth.
The magnitude of lapsing time grants mercy to none.
My clock works differently than the one you hold to be true,
I'm in a swirl with the air they gasp for their last breath,
I eavesdrop on every single last word uttered,
While scrutinizing the final glances they make.
Putting on the dead man's shoes, I cherish their fruitions
And lament upon the remnant of unfulfilled dreams.
The act of getting my job done haunts me the most.
I am not a sage,
Nor a knave, and not even a shallow entity.
Nonetheless, I ought to give one piece of advice for the living:
In the farthest distance, you see a celestial afterglow,
A cluster of dead stars that faded thousands of light years ago
But still fastened in the skies as though it is alive as ever.
So, let your precious soul ignite a little brighter,
And may your deeds shine further even after you're long gone.