Dying While Living by Matt Mercado

Dying While Living

You’ve never truly lived

if you haven’t experienced

crippling alcoholism

and called it

the highest point

of your life.

If you haven’t woken up

sometime after noon

still drunk

with a busted lip

half your money gone

and your first coherent thought

whether there was anything left

in the bottle

while there was nothing left

in the soul.

If you haven’t spent nights

bouncing between bars,

strange apartments,

even stranger women,

wake up on a torn and dirty couch

convinced this was true freedom.

If you haven’t watched people

gradually stop answering your calls

or women you loved become

women who used to love you

and still chose the bar because

admitting the party had ended

would be admitting what it had cost.

But if you have nobody

to wake you up in the morning

and not even your heart,

your mind,

or your body

left to give,

is that living

or dying

or dying while living?

Matt Mercado is an author based out of Potomac, Maryland whose work stems from lived experience. Themes include grief, death, decay, and the less glamorous parts of human life. In his free time he can be found exploring historic towns with his toddler or driving around in his classic car, which as with writing, is an act of faith and risk.