How To Rob My Grave
(hint: you can’t)
First: The earth
To begin with, let me welcome you, my poor unhappy graverobber. Stay as long as needed.
This patch of planet is but a token gift. My humble prize for having breathed the air and stoked the atoms well within my time. I am grateful for it. And in my gratitude, feel obliged to share with any nearby stumbler.
Take note, dear friend. Please, take note.
My clay-and-soil blanket sits much firmer than the flowerbed. And as you thrust your shovel-spade, breaking peaces off my grave, observe how easily the weapon’s steely head will stick.
Stuck fast. Held quick. Cut short, with greedy earthen hugs, is every digger’s reach.
You see, whenever any grieving souls pay visit to my plot; they offer up their salty woes and stories un-forgot. Sentiment for sediment, my soil cradles all. And all the while, these hurting few, they kneel beside my bed. Packing down the dirt so tight, I hold their burdens through the night, with hopes they’ll stand up tall.
Dig and dig and dig your fill. Kick up my handsome dust.
This mud. My mud.
My loamy flesh has nurtured only human stress. For you, I’m just as patient. And never any less.
Second: The dregs
Now, desperate delver. You sweet and darling dog. If you burrow luckily and flip my needless lid, prepare for demi-godless labours befitting both our sins.
Despite how far expired and immobile I remain, my bones are hard and faithful still. You cannot bear such weight.
My legs were grown from uphill strides. From bounding, leaping, flying. More like springs or rower’s tools. No sticks would climb as high.
In life, I never learned to stand. That stillness made me itch and twitch and yearn to print my feet a bit. Graffiti every inch of crust; my soles and I could reach.
And any time that I was met with lazy opposition (still-person here, fight-craven there, debates I long since sated), I’d curl my toes and grip the ground. My knees and thighs would proudly bow. And clicking heels, I’d flick the globe - ripping gravity from beneath them.
My arms were built eclectic. Lived a hectic life, indeed. Every action you could dream, my arms could aptly guess. They lifted only heaviness. My troubled friends in love. Pulled me up that climbing wall of evening’s embered doves.
And they held. On. Off. They held. THEY HELD.
Do you know what type of strength it takes to keep a gentle hold? A comfort kind? To embrace your warmth with lightest touch and spare that touch from breaking?
My ribs were limber by design. And, together with my dancing spine, they nursed my stormy, weeping heart and reared my tantrum lungs. Celebrated all their joys and kissed where life had stung. Proudest wardens, parents ever. Saved the world from chaos mine and shielded me its weather.
Alas, poor forager! You fail me so! To even test my head! My skull’s a faultless fortress, it must be plainly said.
Necessity demanded walls immune to anxious dread. Dungeons for intrusive thoughts, all gnashing at their straps. Battlements adorned with rage, backed up by patient, peaceful acts.
And, nestled deep within were chambers lined with silk and gold. Residing there, no queens or heirs, just those who ruled themselves.
This was my body. Unbroken still. No longer mine to give. My bones, now free of human need, will choose their stronger kin.
Try and try to prise and tempt. Persuade them, all you like. You’ll find their rest takes much from life: they stubbornly belong.
I close with a stone
My sad and lonely, shivering child. Stared down by blackest morn. Please forgive what rotten luck my rotting corpse has brought you.
Perhaps I can attempt amends for selfishly decaying. It’s not the morbid treasure, but the stone that makes a grave. Upon my rock, you may have spied a lack of epitaph. Instead, a scrawl of cracking dents. Of humble puncture wounds. No pattern, print or chosen script. Just marks of human truth.
My one request for burial; I’ll admit, it seemed surreal. A chisel set atop my tomb. You’ll see it by your feet. A gift for those I met in life, whom now I meet in mourning. I asked that any visit here was paid with little stories.
They etch. They carve. They hammer hard. Bless their flooding eyes! In death, my memory seems to fail. So they remind me of our time.
Digger dear, I offer this.
If your needs must take from me tonight, please lift this modest tome. Fear not its bulk. It almost floats, you might scarcely believe. For every message given here, set down in dusty love, I let the writer leave this place with fragments of my heart.
Thus, of all this muck of mine,
the gravestone is the lightest part.
