After Reading About Totoro as The Angel of Death

I walked down the shadowed street of Friday evening
because dusk is the most magical time of day
& everyone knows that sunsets herald new worlds
the way that sunrises herald their goodbyes.
Totoro first showed himself to Satsuki at her
darkest hour, alone in the rain when she was
shouldering both her sister & her fear of death.
He must have understood – everyone has loss
& everyone has lost before. I remember how
my grandfather passed on a spring morning
eleven years ago & I didn’t know how to
turn around at the funeral. I kept a stitch of
the red yarn flowers we wore in my pocket
& tried not to stare. I remember the absence
of night for the weeks that followed
when every cloud was white in the sky,
whiter than the silk lining the inside of
the coffin that my grandmother picked out.
When Catbus found Mei & sent Satsuki
down the grave road, I never doubted once that
they’d make it out alive. Every road is said
to lead home even when it’s not the one
you’re dreaming of. I wondered if my grandfather,
who had a fear of heights, would have received
the spirit money and gifts that we burned for him
next to his gravestone when all the smoke drifted
upwards. A raven circled twice around the smoke
before descending into the trees over the hill.
When I was younger I dreamt of being a bird
because I was afraid of the spaces
between certainty & the spaces between finality.
I wanted to live in limbo, live in the safety
of the sky where nothing is permanent.
But nothing could be permanent, not even the sky.
Satsuki ran through the woods & this world
to find her sister as the sunset melted the light
into shadow. An angel noticed & passed on.
Passed on Mei & past the garden shrines of the
thicket. Mei might have drowned in the river
in a past life, but in this one, death was never
meant to be an ending. Death was never meant
to be the end.