When Death Knocks Twice and You Refuse to Answer
By Olivia Salter
Word Count: 397
The first time, he came as a whisper.
A floorboard sighed beneath unseen weight. A shadow lingered just beyond the corner of my eye.
I told myself it was only the wind.
But the wind doesn't breathe your name.
I turned my face toward the sun, its warmth settling softly across my skin.
"I'm not done," I said, fingers curled around the pulse of an ordinary morning—
my laughter still wandering the hallway,
a packet of garden seeds waiting on the kitchen table for spring.
He left without protest.
Only a glance—
not cruel, not kind—
as though he already knew we would meet again.
And we did.
He returned not as a shadow, but in reflections.
In the gray beneath my eyes.
In my mother's hand, shaking as she passed me the salt.
In the empty chair that no one moved afterward.
In the silence pressing against my ribs while the world kept insisting on tomorrow.
Then he knocked again.
Harder.
This time, he came carrying names.
Jerome.
Aunt Vi.
The tiny heartbeat that disappeared before we could learn who they might have become.
I stood my ground.
Not with anger.
Not with defiance.
With purpose.
"The ink is still wet, and the garden is still waiting," I said.
"There are seeds that haven't broken the earth.
There is a garden still asking for my hands.
There's someone I have yet to forgive for leaving without goodbye.
And a prayer I still owe my father before the shadows stretch too long."
Death listened.
He waited.
Then he turned and walked away.
No slammed door.
No judgment.
Only the sound of my own breathing,
steady enough to fill the room like a promise.
So I remained—
anchored by pulse and purpose.
Holding on, not because I feared dying,
but because unfinished love was still putting down roots beneath my skin.
Each morning, I rise.
I kneel where the earth waits.
I pull stubborn weeds.
I tuck hope between rows of tomatoes and marigolds.
I carry memory like smooth river stones in my pockets—
not to weigh me down, but to remember the road still calling.
When Death knocks again,
he'll find me with dirt beneath my nails,
the scent of rain clinging to my clothes,
hands deep in the soil,
growing something that will outlive me—
and I won't even cross the room to answer the door.
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