Letting The Earthworms Starve
I think about death,
like lips curled round a plum
taking in all its flavors.
When I was nine and my grandmother died
I kissed her forehead as she lay in her coffin.
I hadn’t expected her to be
so cold and hard,
so unforgiving.
After I touched her, I cried,
and didn’t want to ever
die.
I didn’t ever want to feel
like that.
I wanted a way out, of this body,
without dying,
but how could I get out without
dying?
There was no way out but through death,
and yet,
I couldn’t stand the thought of dying.
I was mad at my parents for ever having had me.
Didn’t they know they had sentenced me to death?
I couldn’t make sense of it.
The circles in my brain
went round and round.
For months it was all
I could think about,
crying in the kitchen,
and in my bed at night,
and at school on the playground.
While other children played,
I thought about death.
Being buried beneath the ground with the earthworms
eating my flesh.
Screaming with no one to hear me.
Feeling suffocated
in the dark,
locked
in my tiny box
alone.
I thought about death so much,
I made myself sick.
I vomited.
Then one day, I stopped thinking about it.
I put it out of my mind.
Recently, I have found myself thinking about death again.
Not in the same terrified way I did as a child,
but as a woman
seeing my life pass quicker than I had ever imagined.
I know, now, I am moving towards death
like a swimmer caught in a riptide
being pulled out to sea.
I cannot fight against it.
I cannot swim harder than its pull.
Death will win.
But I also know I cannot just float
and let myself be taken.
I cannot sit idly by and wait for the inevitable.
I must fight.
I must forget what awaits me
and throw myself into every second of this life.
I must let the earthworms starve.
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