Jan Thälmann // D7 // Cbd 2 // Fin

You have kissed death before. On a lonely day during the hottest hour of the year, you'd tasted the warm embrace of death. Water filled lungs, arms heavy as a stone, you'd kissed death with all the regrets in the world. A cry for help, the sinking feeling of death upon your lips. You'd never expected to see the way the world turns in just minutes, burning fire in the depths of your chest. You'd been dragged through, blackened by the water and burnt into a pit of uncertainty when you faded away. You were hauled out of there. Forever ingrained with death's kiss upon your lips, you could hear shouts from outside. There was nothing for what had to have been years of your life. You'd seen death, smiled in death's face, and breathed the same air. You'd seen a light grow as you desperately wanted to cling to it, but all that warmth sank away.

A gasp is all you gave. Minutes is what you've been told. A dead boy for only minutes before your heart beats once more. You were only twelve when you'd met death. Naive boys who thought they could swim at any time of day. You never told anyone what you'd seen. Scared to be berated by your mother and father. You'd seen a god that day. Kissed death on the lips and told it wasn't time. You had more life to live. A breath of fresh air in a woods meant for you. It's in everything you find. You are just a man now. A cold man with breathing problems, unable to catch your breath. A man who's blood is filled with memories of death. A man who's skin still feels the water crawling up you. You'd changed. It's what the neighborhood kids had told you. And you deserved to. Death had gotten their hands upon your skin, marked you as theirs, and you'd not known what to do. Life changes in mysterious ways, but you'd grown tougher, stronger, and older. You've learned what the world is like. You've survived death. You can survive life too.