A Conversation With A Strange Woman

** (This literary work is based on a true story) **

I once spoke with a woman

With an illness inside of her heart,

I was there to simply ask her a few questions

But I just did not quite know how to start.

How do you ask a person

Who can count the time that they have left?

Which moments that they regret in life

And which ones that they liked the best.

I did not know how to ask her

If she could give me any kind of advice,

When I was given my entire life to live

And she had only gotten a slice.

I was scared that she might judge me

For wasting minutes of her time,

So I asked her just one question

As I heard her old clock chime.

I asked her what it felt like

Knowing that so soon she would die,

And as she told me her short answer

She looked me straight into the eye.

"I might know that my time is ending

But pity for you is all that I have got,

Because since I wake up knowing that I am dying

You wake up pretending that you are not."