A Conversation with Death
Death arrived as twilight bled quietly into the walls.
Not a knock, not a shadow, just presence, like a forgotten name curling behind the tongue.
It sat across from her at the old table, where teacups once knew laughter and grief in equal measure. The air shivered, though the windows were closed.
She looked up, and her voice broke like frost.
“Have you come for me?”
Its head inclined, slow as dusk sliding down a hill. Not cruel. Not kind. Just inevitable.
“If I had,” it said, voice soft as soil,
“your lips would not have formed that question.”
She studied what could not be seen, its face a suggestion, a ripple in the stillness. “Then why,” she whispered, “do you sit where the living used to?”
A breath that wasn’t hers passed through the room.
“Because you’ve been calling my name in dreams,” Death murmured. “And I am polite to those who mourn softly.”
She looked down at her palms, creased maps of holding on.
“I think... I only wanted silence.”
A pause. Then:
“I am not silence,” Death said.
“I am the echo after.”
“I do not quiet the storm, I come once it has already wept its final drop.”
Her throat closed. Her hands trembled. Still, she asked:
“Is it cold?”
She didn’t know if she meant the grave. Or the forgetting. Or the parting. “Only to those who cling to fire as if it cannot burn them,” Death replied.
“For some, I am a homecoming. For others, a locked door with no key.”
The room pressed in like memory.
She wanted to ask everything.
About the mother who had gone too quietly. The friend who never said goodbye.
The child she only held in dreams.
But all that escaped her was:
“Will I see them?”
Death did not move.
“You will see them as they see you,” it said.
“Which is to say, through longing. Through light. Through the veil memory wears when it tries not to fade.”
It stood then, tall and weightless.
“Not yet,” it said, before she could ask again.
“I have only come to remind you, the clock is not a promise. It is a question.”
“And breath,” it added, turning toward the night,
“is the softest way the body says thank you before it forgets how.”
Then it was gone.
Only the chair remained warm.
And her heart, for once, beat like a poem too stubborn to end.
I’m Fatima Zahra, a new writer and student who finds meaning in quiet things, unspoken thoughts, and the ache beneath silence. I write prose that leans into the poetic, often touching on sorrow, womanhood, and the hidden corners of the self. I believe my stories don’t always seek answers; sometimes they just want to sit with the questions. Lately, I’ve been exploring journalism as a way to amplify voices that often go unheard, and to tell stories that deserve to be seen and felt