The first time I met death, it passed me like clockwork

I watched as it lingered on my aunt, as though memorizing her features

Everyone had seen it coming, its apparatus drifting from room to room

Even now, I can still smell its presence in her room

Death never comes once

Years later it returned, it had aged since I last saw it

It probably thought the same of me, it had gotten sloppy.

Lowered itself into the gun of my friend, as it held his hands carefully, yet slowly pressing the trigger. It was his head, or his mouth.

I was never quite sure, still too drunk from sorrow; I had not bothered to ask.

I still wonder though, even till today. Perhaps the how could justify the why, or what not

What not.  It had come to my attention that I was no longer a moving object, my actions, repetitive.

I had become clockwork.

Always ticking.

I could not say the same for my friends

They moved on like life expected they should

But they had not passed death before,

They did not realize how it lingers, how it never leaves

It just lingers.

If I had concentrated enough, perhaps I would’ve seen the familiarity in its apparatus

Smelled my aunt’s passing on its lips.

It never leaves.

I have long since lost track of time

And as time doing as time does

It seems to have lost track of me

I have become less sixteen

And more eighteen

And I know for a fact, that I have out grown

Clockwork.