deathbed conversions

and then, you always thought you knew best, you always thought you'd be right and good and successful. in the end you always won at every game and always wanted every just dessert deserved by anyone in all the world. you wanted these things and this feeling and you stopped at nothing to just touch something solid and real and heavy, something continuous and completely satisfying, like a chocolate malt after a hike or a gold medal or a 4.0 on graduation day. but somehow each of these things came, and passed, and you still wanted to live in the infinite solitude of being the best, as if time could stand still at that moment when you won the largest, longest, hardest race, the camera forever trained on your smile and your fist thrust into the air in victory.

but time ticked on and you found yourself older and older, and good at some things and not at others, and prone to making the occasional human mistake, and grateful for help on hard days and the people who helped you. you trudged forward, you watched time speed as the comparative number of years of your life expanded and each moment was somehow proportionally shorter but infinitely more important. you waited until the last moment came to pass, until that last brief in-breath and final sign, but you did in the end accept that your race was over and you had not won and you were not crushed but instead amused and if you had another breath you would have laughed or at least chuckled at yourself but you didn't so your eyes float shut and your brain slows and this you fades away.