Dying Is Like Being Born, Only Backwards

—For Evan G.

Where will I go in tender sleep?

Do the grasses call me back through soil and root,

to meet myself before I was called my given name?

Does the doorway of my mouth, left ajar, spill my nest of secrets,

each strange and hidden symbol released into mother's knowing arms—

the gentle rhizomic labyrinth just below? 

Do the red-clay aqueducts of my veins

become the silver-salt of river silt, savoring each delectable footprint

of friends and lovers at play?

My laughter shakes motes of moon-dust from willow hair.

My sighs string dew-lace from the larkspur and the lily.

Will you see me when I burst from the foam

in a draught of wild salmon?

I am there, I am there,

I am the armor and softness 

of the endless world.

I am watching from the starling's eye;

my heart speaks now in thunderheads. 

O, the gods do answer the soul-songs 

of creatures becoming terraform. 

I ask again, a prayer through chipping bark

and skipping stones: please, what becomes of the body?

The question births flowers from my hands.

---

Silvatiicus Riddle (He/They) is a 4x Rhysling-nominated dark fantasy/speculative fiction writer & poet haunting the bones of an old amusement park on the edge of New York City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Enchanted Living, Eternal Haunted Summer, Spectral Realms, and Creepy Podcast, among others. He combats despair and entropy with his newsletter, The Goblin's Reliquary. For all available works, please visit: http://linktr.ee/silvatiicusriddle