Hopes for After Death

When I die,

I wish you would bury me

Somewhere in the yard

Behind the house we called our home.

I wish you would wrap my body

In the quilt my mother brought me home in

Just the way we buried the cat.

I wish you would paint stones

And lay them over my grave

To mark my place in the stillness of things.

I wish, in death, to be consumed

By all the things that nourished me in life.

By the miner’s lettuce and lemon clover

That my brother and I chewed on

When we were still children playing in the woods.

By the wildflowers that adorned my hair

As I grew older.

By the dirt and earth that cradled me

When I rested outside in the spring.

I wish for my hair to lie in the ground

Like the roots of old oak trees

That stretch their tendrils deeper and deeper

Into the earth in search of

Everything.

And when you die,

I wish they would bury you beside me

So that I may share my death with you,

And show you all the ways I have come to know stillness.