250 Words: Dinner guests (one unwanted, one always welcome)

I am the end.

I am sometimes short, sometimes long.

I am sometimes a surprise, sometimes relief.

I am disease, famine, pestilence, war, nature.

I am the worst elements of human nature.

I am grief, despair, mourning, even memory.

I am cold as ice, hot as fire- whatever’s needed.

I am the plunging knife, noose, bullets, bombs.

I am sometimes the end of addiction to alcohol and drugs. 

I am pills, poison, severed veins and throats, leaps into the abyss, asphyxiation.

I am twisted metal, lungs filled with water, crumbling rocks, burning, electricity, suffocation.

I am all means to the end.  I am the cold hand that stills your heart and squeezes out your last breath, I am.

***

I am almost everything.

I am your childhood, metamorphosis, adulthood.

I am your first kiss, exams, bike rides, long walks, days at the seaside, holidays.

I am museums, art galleries, monuments.

I am family meals, family weddings, family funerals.

I am your hobbies, your jobs and career, your spouse, your children, or the lack there of.

I am your dreams, your nightmares, alcohol, drugs.

I am every feeling: every tingling nerve, every hair stood on end, every sound, every sight, every taste, every emotion.

I am love, sex and masturbation.

I am grief, despair, mourning, I am the smells and sounds of memory.

I am the sun, the rain, the earth, every plant, every animal.

I am all things between birth and death, your every joy and even your strife, I am.