Death on the Stairwell

I am required to walk up and down
These flights of stairs everyday
Delivering this document to that person
Or this person
All of them girls
With short, bouncy, brown hair
Typing and hustling, giggling  
In this busy, assidious work space.  

But my head
Is static,
Permanent anesthesia
Sometimes thinking about how easy
It looked
When he died because though his breaths
Were stunted and labored,
He didn’t know anything….and wasn’t in pain
Slack jaw and dead head
And maybe that’s how everyone should go
Wrapped warm like an embryo
In an intimate darkness
Where the hearts and panic
Of others are comfortably meaningless

Maybe the rest of us are actually
Fools
To wait to see what gore
Will claw in to our bodies
And grimly seize our breath.    

I'll walk down these stairs
To deliver this document
to the girl with the perma-smile
Pretend that I care
About these sorts of things.

But

What I am thinking about
Is how easy it is.
That maybe I wish I were dying
Right now
How inevitable the process
How easy the pace
Particularly when you are the vector,
The deliverer,  
Of your macabre but inevitable fate.