When I die, hang my rib cage from a tree.
Many birds have lived inside me,
new life forming in the heart of death.
Loss feels like a sentence half written,
without a full stop.
It doesn’t have a nice,
neat end to it,
it happens in the middle
of a sentence,
and sometimes those sentences are never written at all.
I feel like my death will be stubborn.
It’ll be from my own years of mistreatment on this body that has so far served me well,
and if I don’t go at 3am while the world is loading then something is off.
Maybe it’s just me that sees the time that way,
a period where the world stops and blurs with a different,
far off star,
before reverting back to the norm.
But normal does exist at 3am for some.
Other people exist at 3am,
laughing
and walking
and breathing
and crying
and being human,
wandering the empty streets with their arms outstretched,
running through the rain after a lost love like a bad movie,
other people are their own protagonists and are alive even when you don’t notice.
When I die, float me on top of a swimming pool.
I’ve always felt false under the water,
like my body never existed in the first place,
I try to stay deathly still so I won’t cause any ripples
and it never works.
Finally my carcass will be able to complete one of my goals,
achieve something mindless as my brain separates from the rest
and sinks to the bottom,
my fingers grazing the surface tension,
one toe dipping in first to check the temperature
before it all finally collapses
and joins that drowned mind at the bottom,
the place I used to find so soothing.
I believe in a lot of things.
I believe in love,
I believe in you,
I believe in life.
I believe in the fact that the sun will rise in the morning
and I am to continue living and loving,
even when it’s hard.
Even when I am broken down into nothing and resurrected,
even when my hands look more like a piece of throwaway paper than this skin,
this world was built for the living,
and I am allowing myself no escape.
When I die, bury me in your bedroom.
Drape me in sheets that smell a little too familiar,
tuck my hair behind my ear one last time
and know that even gone,
I’m still here,
and I still love you.
Sleep beside me,
the feeling of your breath on my cheek contrasted by the lack of mine,
don’t let me sleep alone.
Don’t let me die for a long time.
Until we’re both old and grey,
still surrounded by our love for each other
and comforted by that sun that still rises,
out my window I can see the birch tree my ribs would dangle from in the snow,
hear the ravens song of creaks as they take up nest,
the gurgling of water,
the scent of you still infused in these sheets,
my love,
don’t let me go.
I promise to love you until my dying day,
which will come many centuries from now,
once all my poems have been burned
and there is no one left to read them,
don’t let me go before then.
And I promise to hold you in my heart until it melts.
Until these bones turn to dust,
I promise to love you.
Because you do the same.