On a quiet Sunday afternoon,
a knock at the door—
soft, certain.
I opened,
and there he stood,
a stranger dressed in familiarity.
“My name,” he said,
“is Mortality.”
I hesitated—
not from fear,
but from the weight of being seen.
“What do I owe
the pleasure
of such an early visit?”
He smiled, almost kindly.
“You’ve been thinking of me.
I thought it best
we meet.”
So I let him in.
I brewed tea
with trembling hands,
and we sat across
a small wooden table—
two beings
pretending this was ordinary.
I looked into his eyes.
There—
a flicker of time,
a sweetness
too delicate to keep,
and beneath it,
the quiet tragedy
of how briefly
everything is allowed to exist.
I stared longer
than I should have—
and saw, waiting patiently,
the end of all things.
My chest tightened.
Grief arrived
before loss had reason to.
Tears gathered—
uninvited,
but understood.
Mortality leaned forward,
gentler now,
and told me a story:
Two lovers,
born in different seasons—
one of sun,
one of falling leaves.
They were never meant
to stay,
only to pass
through one another.
But for a few fleeting weeks,
their worlds overlapped.
And in that brief collision,
they loved—
fully,
recklessly,
as if time
had forgotten them.
They knew
it would end.
And still,
they chose each other
anyway.
Mortality finished his tea.
At the door,
he turned—
not as a stranger,
but something closer
to a teacher.
“I leave you a gift,”
he said.
Not time—
never time.
But urgency.
The quiet, burning knowing
that this moment—
this breath,
this love,
this life—
is already
leaving.
And therefore,
is everything.
Jia Zhenia 