It's just poetry, it won't bite

This One Will Kill You


11.01.19 Posted in today's words by

Gale Acuff’s most recent poem to appear here was “Mashed” (August 2019)

This One Will Kill You
By Gale Acuff
I guess I don’t mind dying, the being
-dead part anyway that we call death, but
dying itself, that might hurt a lot and
who knows how it will happen, save God and
Jesus and the Holy Ghost? Anyway
when the dying’s done and it’s death and I’m
dead then I’ll understand everything,
Miss Hooker says, my Sunday School teacher,
and she’s got to die, too, one day. Is she
scared? I asked her after class today and
she said, Well, I’m praying to be brave when
the time comes, which is a damn good answer,
and anyway, she added, she’ll meet God
once and for all. I asked her why not kill
herself and get it over with and meet
God that much faster but she frowned and said
That’s suicide and suicide’s a sin
and for sins like that that’s what Hell is for.
Then she smiled again. So I’m not dead. Yet.


One Response to “This One Will Kill You”

  1. Ed Zahniser says:

    I think at some point we must’ve had the same Sunday School teacher! The poet nails it here . . .

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