Thoughts of my many lives reduced to subtle sighs,
Living breathing hues reduced to written lines.
Up the vines I carefully climb and am then dropped,
Falling slowly, hands gripping rope burns blazing hot
Resisting gravity’s insatiable allure.

Ground meets spine and my lungs collapse
Upon a bed of lichen my eyes bulge, and then relax.
Stars dance constellations behind eyelids and
Are engraved into the stone of memory,
The lichen becoming a decomposing cemetery.