IF

By Emma Woodhouse

If my fingers reach out, they’ll touch

splintering wood,

bowing from the burden of six feet of soil.

Yet I cannot move them. 

If I point my toes, they’ll touch

the hard, straight box

you had them put me into.

Yet they will not budge.

If I opened my eyes, I’d see pitch,

inside this crate of mortality you chose just for me.

Yet my eyelids will not stir.

What remains of me lies in the dark,

at one with the earth, returning.

I hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing. 

Nothing works any longer.

Yet somehow, I’m still connected;

a scratching and squelching, a mole or a worm,

and somehow, I sense when you come,

with flowers –

I never liked flowers; they die before your eyes –

but you leave them because that’s what people do;

weekly at first, then monthly;

at last only my two anniversaries:

my life, my death,

then you forget.

You let me rest in peace;

I turn, slowly, solitarily, to dust. 

#darkpoetsclub