Lost Life

How can you lose your life?

I get that you can lose your wife

or husband, your car keys, or a bet.

Yet I fail to understand 

how you can lose your life?

Like there’s still a ‘you’ 

that’s just a bit diminished,

not that you’re completely and finally finished?

How can you lose your life?

Perhaps you’ve been a little careless 

then find you’re missing something precious

that strange old thing we call aliveness.

Can someone take your life?

—tag it onto theirs 

extending living for a few (how many?)

months or years,

or keep it in reserve, cat-like, 

and squander what they had by right.

How can you lose your life?

Is it just something that’s said

by folk well-meaning, nervous,

unable, for the life of them,

to speak that dread word: dead?