I can feel the worms wriggling in my skin, angry and hungry. They'll be the death of me, I think. I'm counting the seconds since the coffin was nailed shut, since the first spray of dirt splattered the lid, since the sad throng stood in a sad circle. I'd like to think they said nice things. I'd like to hope that they remembered me kindly, thought of me well, thought of a future where none of this was necessary, where I too could be happy.
Do you think they got my name right after I died? Do you think they spoke of their daughter? Or their son? Was the obituary for someone real? Or was it for the person they made up, the person they wished I was? My mother told me that she had to grieve her daughter when I came out to her. She didn't want to talk to me for months. Is she grieving again now? Did she get it all out last time?
I can feel the worms twitching through the edges of the world, beginning their feast. I'm lying perfectly still, flat on my back, eyes closed. My hands rest, carefully folded across my stomach, gently placed by a kind employee to whom I was just another paycheck. I'm sure my skin is ashen now. My clothes are too nice. This isn't me. This will never be me. My skin will settle now, settling down.
My brain is beginning to slow. How much useful consciousness can one take with them after they die? How many more moments do we get? I almost feel like I did something wrong. I shouldn't be here. It took all my self control to not pound on the roof of the box, to beg and scream and cry. I don't want to rot. I don't want to turn to dust, forgotten. I don't want my last achievement to be the nothingness that dominated my life. I wanted to mean something. I wanted to matter.
I can feel the worms consuming me, my body dissolving acid stomachs. What happens next? Do I become the dirt? Was there a point to it? To any of this? Do I become a ghost, to go and haunt the survivors? I am locked now. Static and unchanging. I might watch, drawing myself in great circles around the lives of those I once touched, forced to submit to the knowledge that I cannot hate forever. Will they grow to fix themselves? Will they become something new? Will they be happy or sad? Which of the two would make me feel better? Would watching just hurt? I was rendered a memory with every hammer blow against the nails of the box, every sharp jab of the shovel on soil. I am forever like this. I will never again be real.
Animation is funny. We dance our little dances, little puppets on little strings. Where's your money, little one? Where's your soul? Do you exist? Dance for me and I'll let you live another day. Yes sir, Mr Government, sir. Let me shine your shoes, massage your shoulders, suck your dick. Let me prove that I deserve to live. Let me prove it by earning that sweet sweet dough that makes the world spin, so I can spend every penny scrounging the rent on this shitty apartment and eating this shitty food. We are all animated by forces greater than our own comprehension because maybe if we can be convinced we don't understand oppression then we won't understand it. I don't think I ever really did until I died and now it's too late. It's too late.
I can feel the worms making rapid progress, leaving nothing at all. I can walk through the memories that make up a life. Any life. I can make some up too, pretending my life was coherent, that it had a story. Sometimes people ask me when I came out or what that was like. But no one ever comes out. You just change. And some changes are visible and some are on the inside and are never visible. And no one ever stops changing. There is no single moment that marks it. I never came out. I never really existed. The version of me as I was when I died, that only ever existed for a second. The one before that also only got a second. I change constantly. I come out constantly. Some of my friends said it made sense after I came out and others said it came out of nowhere. I later learned that was a pretty good way to tell who actually paid attention to me, who actually cared about me. All of our futures are buried in the present for those who care enough to put the puzzle pieces together.
Was it worth it? Was I worth anyone's time or attention? Had we known I was going to die this young, I don't think we would've wasted the resources, the time on me. Was your love worth it? Was it worth it to gild the cage of insufficient years? I hope so. I hope I brought all the joy back to you tenfold. I like to promise that things always balance out. Sometimes you help me and sometimes I help you. But the termination, the ending, forever blocks the repayment of my debts. Is that what bothers me most? That I will never hold your hair while you weep, run to stores at 1 am looking for emergency supplies, whisper to you that I love you despite your darkest moments? I wish I had the chance a thousand times over.
I can feel the worms crawling over my bones, my remains picked clean. The box is long gone, given back to the world. Do you ever think about the physicality of graveyards? The sheer space devoted to the dead despite the insufficiency for the living? I am afforded more land for cheaper now that I am deceased than I ever was when I was alive. Will you bury another on top of me eventually? After I am one with the dirt, will I forever wrap another poor soul in my embrace? Our kids will die on the streets so we can pack them into the preserved green spaces. When the seas rise and humanity dies, who will dig graves for you all? Perhaps we should be burning, in death if not in life.
I don't think I have very long left. I don't think there will be very much of me left soon. Time is slipping by in a chaotic fashion. This is true darkness, the way we never expirience it in the cities. I think it's easy to forget what it is to be dark. The constellations of LEDs light your room, the scattered streetlights outside. But if you get far enough away from the cities, there's a time when you can close your eyes and it is indistinguishable from reality. Sensory deprivation on the cheap. The infinite darkness of the eyes. It's easy to be poetic when you're dead. You don't have to worry about the response. No one ever sells well when they're alive right?
I hope so. I can feel the worms taking what's left of the thoughts out of my brain, running the bits of me into the corners of the world. I'm dissolving into component pieces. The bricks that make up a soul are vanishing before me. Can I comprehend the change? There is nothing in my head anymore. Is this it? Is this the limits of my mark on the world? I'm scared. I don't want to go. I don't want to go