Alive or Living?

We’re all dying

Each breath we take one step closer to death

but I’ve always felt dead so whats this present tense

of the word die?

what does it mean to be alive? 

To breathe and let the air inflate your lungs to the point of release? 

Have the blood flowing through your body that you cannot 

see or feel but know it is there? 

Maybe its the wrinkles you get on your face from age because it shows

that you have existed.

what does it mean to be alive? 

A simple seven worded question yet no true answer can be found.

I never knew what it meant to be alive but then I felt my heart beat

and not because thats what its supposed to do

but because i felt myself breathing for the first time. 

It began with them and turned into much more than the vocabulary

i hold within my mind can express. 

It began with them showing me the fear i never knew i had.

the pain i kept hidden for a plithera of centuries 

and the happinesses i never knew i could possess just from a single touch by them .

Is this what it means to be alive?

or is this what it means to be living? 

Which ever it is im content with the fact that im no longer dead

i just wonder how much longer it will take for others to realize that they 

too are dead.