Burial
Melancholy and mortality
Of course, I am aware of it: Every ghostly hill has the most will to live. I can confirm. The departing souls reside in old overgrown trees whose boughs are tired. They hang the leaves for them. They are in tall yellowing grasses you never bother cutting — carefully making sure that each on which your feet land, albeit a little less, as some may be caught in your shoes, standing erect yet again. Though lowly they were, strongly they yearn to feel for themselves through ministrations.
Many folks come to and pray at the hill for none they could care. Yet go they must. While I bid the lifeless greetings, for it isn’t mourning them I come. And should I join my wail to them instead, as I had enough of rain drops on my window alone; I had enough of just weeping along, long as a lonesome person.
Now I yearn to see the drops perish into soil where I lay on, and as I later held a germinating body, — which fed off its watery form — cry, sing like a mother to the newborn on her delivering bed.
And so I cry not for the dead.
I cry — For as alive as I am, I am not living.
“You seem so life-like,” approached a voice, followed by a hand, carefully picking sticking seeds on my dress. Must be from the nut grasses around.
“Pardon you, I am alive,”
“You can’t be speaking with me if you were,”
“Are you saying you’re dead?”
“Are you saying you’re alive?“
Questions raise another, and I am one. As I look up from the ground to him; which I find out was a man-like figure, sitting nearby. Not too near; since in an instant, the atmosphere is transformed to his eyes. His gazing is rather deathly but alack, empty of threat! It’s longing for a dear life.
Then he asked. “Are you afraid?“
“No, not even a bit.”
I continued, “I have long envied you. The world is beautiful as long as we don’t feel it anymore.”
The folks gradually leave the burial. I don’t.
(April 24, 2022)
I must acknowledge the influence of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Spirits of the Dead” and Emily Brontë’s timeless classic “Wuthering Heights” upon the creation of this piece.
