Down the hallway came the soft but solid footsteps

In addition to the poem I just posted, I also tried to write something a tad less cheesy on the same subject.  I'm not sure whether I succeeded.

Down the hallway came the soft but solid footsteps. Like a monk walking on mahogany. I tried to turn my head, but only my eyes moved, and then, only a little. The fluorescent lights above me dimmed and took a plum-tinted hue. That such a jarring instrument of humiliation could suddenly change into an impression of a lilac blossom! Suddenly I thought of water buffalo skin in the twilight. The tough hide always looked purple against the gray fields, cloaked with the glimmer of starlight yet to shine.

I knew that he had come to collect me for his realm, and I was ready to go. As he stopped by the door, I tried to puff my chest with courage. But, coughs spewed forth instead. Little, desperate gasps of disloyal air.

The machines whirred and beeped. She scrambled around me, wiping the sputum I did not expel, and rose to call the nurses. Her limbs are stiff with arthritis, but I remember when they were as lithe and fleet as a doe’s. I remember how they followed me wherever I went, and how they steadfastly held up the child in her womb. She paused at the door and looked back. As if she too knew that I had a visitor she did not invite, and whom she certainly didn’t welcome. Death balked a little at her investigation. That’s my girl! She scares the skirts off of fear itself.

Eventually, she picked up her slow shuffle once again and went to report my cough, still clutching the tissue in her hand. He took the opportunity and slid into my room. I expected either darkness or light, coldness or warmth, but I found none of these. There was no radiating glow of golden light. There was no chilling, stabbing shadow. As he took his tape and measured my life well-lived, I saw between his armpits and glimpsed … I can’t tell you what. Really, I think it would be disappointing if you knew. You expect a thousand-foot waterfall of black mercury, or a Four Seasons room with the bed turned down. But this is death, not Armageddon, and it’s nothing special.

As he folded up the tape once again, he nodded. After an instant of unfulfilled expectations, I noticed that the pain was being stripped away. It clung tightly to my sternum, but death ripped and clawed at it until I nearly forgot it was ever there in the first place. The fluorescent lights and the bed I lied upon also left, with the pain. I felt my body open up, like smoke leaving a chimney. I started to billow.

And then she came back. She grasped my hands and begged me to stay. She flung her arms around my waist and pulled me toward the ground. I felt her tear on my forearm like the lightest brush of a dove feather, or the passing kiss of a cloud. I whispered that I had already been measured, and my life was fully grown. I whispered my thanks and my love, and my promise to wait for her. I don’t know what she said in reply, because the chimney kept pumping me forth and I billowed and dispersed in the heavens. I became the starlight that has yet to shine.