“Have you died?” She asked while looking at the blue summer sky.

He looked at her questioning. “No, if I did then I wouldn’t be here.”

“No, I don’t mean the whole heart stopping, lungs feeling on fire because you can’t breathe. I’m talking about being dead while you’re still alive. How vision blurs at the edges, colours lost their hue. How you count your breaths wondering if one day you’ll simply forget.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess.” Then he paused, eye’s wondering over to her. “Have you?” Fear edged each word because he knew where those thoughts lead, heard stories from panic adults.

She shrugged her shoulders, just like he did. “Maybe, but I think everyone has died at least once. Maybe some have died more.” Then she sat up, fingers entwined with partly dead grass. “I don’t think it matters how many times you’ve died while living. I think it matters more that you came back. That you crawled out of your grave. I wonder if their first breath of fresh air feels like...”

He watched her, listened as she rumbled on about living life while being dead and coming back to the same life that once killed them and he wondered how he got so lucky to be with a girl like her.