glory be to the topsoil. to the worms. to the private church of mushrooms. what makes for a better angel than the quiet promise of decomposition - that thankless, endless task. returning to the earth: this is a final prayer.
you said to me - we understand so much of history through the lens of how each society handled death. i have been thinking about the funeral industry. about embalming. how the devil is supposed to be almost-human, charming. i was raised on teflon pans. the poison in my blood came from good intentions; sprinkled over pancakes and scrambled eggs. will those particles go, too, when i go?
i keep thinking about how many cultures personify death as being gentle. as being a friend. as being kind-of-beautiful. an outstretched hand. oh, we scowl so much at carrion birds; but they make their nests by the worship of a carcass. something about that feels beautiful to me.
i am often scared. i understand why some people seek immortality, even if it's not something i desire. i spend a lot of time worrying about coffins. i spend a lot of time thinking about how if they dug me up, my bones would tell very little about my soft spots. so many of my friends say - i just want to be a tree. i want to find a quiet space and go home. the other day, we got the bill from the funeral home, and i just stood there, staring. this is death?
you said: it's learning backwards. from how a society approaches death, we might learn how they celebrate life. i worry about what that means, sometimes. about what others will think about us. divorced from our contexts, maybe alien archivists will have a fondness for our tendency to call death sleep. maybe they will write essays titled towards the light: an analysis on how some sects of humanity worshipped solely facing east.
oh, there's so much about my life that won't survive. especially these days. there's so little that lasts in-the-same-shape. oh, if the universe is kind - i want them to know that we loved moss. that we loved lichen. that even decay could be beautiful for us; the little warm space of mulch. how i will go home, one day, in the body of a bird. in a worm. in a leaf.
how when we lay a body in the ground, we say: be at peace.
oh, to go to sleep so gracefully. when i go i want to leave no mark. i want the dirt to take me. // r.i.d & a.b
