Bury me in dirt

Bury me in dirt when I die
Let the maggots claim my skin
Let the mites that have lived on my face for decades
Run free into the earth
Let the blood in my veins flood out into the veins of the dirt
And let the roots of the trees embrace my body in a cage.
Let my bones decay over eons
Spill nutrients into the dirt
Let the bugs and worms and plants all burrow and grow
Through my eye sockets
Through my ribs
Through the cracks between my toes
Let my energy trickle forth—
Not all at once, but over a small eternity—
Into the plants and the animals who eat them
Into the trees that emit bursts of oxygen into the sky
For another creature to breathe
Let me live through dying
For another creature to live
And another one after that
Please don’t be so selfish as to preserve me in a box kept in dirt
Don’t put a barrier between me and that which is my home
Which is all our homes—
Bury me in dirt when I die
Bury me so that I can give back what I borrowed
What was always so precious to me:

My life.

Originally from upstate New York, Will Halm studied writing at Wesleyan University. His writing—which runs the gamut from poetry to historical fiction to creative non-fiction—strives to connect themes of nature, the human body, and trauma. Halm currently lives in Philadelphia, where he coordinates political science research and writes relentlessly on the side.