Let me decay into this garden.
Leave me slouching on the bench.
I'll blend into the roses after a while -
That’s all my body is good for this year.
I'll nourish Earth as it has nourished us all
With our deep red blood and water-logged skin.
Leave me in peace, please give me silence.
Here, I can be sedentary in solitude;
Blend into the ground;
Feed the worms and heal the trees.
Don’t feed me anything more.
Don’t cover me with clothing.
Don’t sustain my slouching frame.
Just let me wane in the wilderness
Where my skin is cold in the dampness
But heated by the melty sun that will soon be sleeping.
This mound is where I want to sit
Exactly as I am.
If I am going to die, I will die in this grass
With a bench below my thighs
And my toes gracing whatever green
Grows beneath them.
Let me fly, when the sun finally sets.
When the orange pool goes away
Is when I shall decay for a better place
Where my spirit has no knots or tangles,
Where strands of DNA unfurrow,
And every skin cell slips into the sludge that is rest,
And I can stretch my sentiments out on a cotton cloth,
Dye the fabric with my natural colors,
And that is all that's left of me in your world.
Like flowers drying on brick steps laid next to a trickling stream
Is how I leave the earthlings behind;
The creatures that constitute the land we run through,
Like ribbons of bliss that always fight for oxygen
Then drop like dead flies falling from diminished clouds,
Like a clump of rain that slaps your skin to remind you that
Pain is a part of being.
Bugs will bite. Splinters will sting.
Knives will cut. Skin always splits.
But when you sit under rose thorns and
Accept that your blood is as red as their fruit’s petals,
You will see we all bleed and our blood is sweet for a reason, and
Roses smell heavenly for good reason.