there is a place in the shade of the forest
where no bird calls, where no light reaches.
that is where I want you to bury me.

no coffin, no shroud. only my skin
and the caress of the dark soil against it.
locked in the earth’s silent embrace.

the animals can have my flesh, tear
and rip until it is all gone. I offer
my blood to sate the thirst of the ferns.

let my bones be gnawed at by the fox
and drilled through by the beetle.
my body is no longer my own.

perhaps I would be the inspired muse
of Kafka, of Bacon. this floral crucifixion
a metamorphosis of my corpse.

a modern daphne.
        a poetic grotesque.