She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.

She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart

She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying
her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.
It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;
for death looked lovely in her face.

Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark
but he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge;
the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered:
"With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!"

She touched me once
And life then stopped.
She held my hand,
My frog heart hopped.
She left my mouth
And formed a smile
With lips that promised:
“In a while.”

I look, I hope, I stand, a dunce — Where is the one who touched me once?

But death was her curse and her gift, and death had been her good friend these long, long years.

Life kissed her however it could.

She smiled at me, arsenically.

She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.

Old legends said Death had a skinny sister denominated Pain, passionately devoted to the loathsome torture that often was Death’s prelude.

My palm cupped her mouth
As I kissed her, the flesh
Of my hand between us.

So, talking with my first wife,
At the dark end of evening, when she leaned
And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs
Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet, — Calling to mind remote and small successions
Of countless other evenings ending so, — I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead

So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.

At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman's sex.
In my case - and, I believe, in the case of Chris McCandless - that was a very different thing from wanting to die.