When I Die
When I die, don't etch my name in stone. I had many names.
One crackled like a log ablaze. One was sharp as glass. Some sang like silver bells.
One lived in secret, in that breath-wide midnight space between us.
Some I didn't even know I had. Some I wore like a coat in the rain.
They are all mine, earned not given, and I will not have them written out.
It's not for you to choose for me. Do not carve my name in stone.
When I die, don't place me in the ground.
I could never stay in one place for so long as that.
Don't compel me to a fate I shunned when the choice was mine.
I will tire of the company and the view, bored and claustrophobic.
I will grow to hate the sound of church bells and mournful prayer.
I am gone and this cannot be undone with arbitrary coordinates in the dirt.
Make no pilgrimage to me. Do not place me in the ground.
When I die, take my body and make what use of it you may.
Take the parts that can do good and burn the rest. Leave me to the winds.
The fire holds no fear for me.
Let me take no more space in the world, I have taken my share.
It is time to make room for other lives now.
Consign me to the air to be a metaphor. Be free of me.
I would not have the weight of my bones drag against the fabric of your future days.
When I die, don't place my picture by the fire.
You cannot pin me to a moment like a butterfly.
I was a thing in motion. Restless as a cloud.
I was the spring, the summer, the autumn and the winter.
I was every scene, every chapter, every song. The desert and the rice field.
Always what I was but never twice the same. A moving frame.
You must not choose amongst them. Do not place my picture by the fire.
When I die, don't remember me.
I was a character that we wrote together and she now belongs to you.
Let there be new adventures for her.
Don't retire me to a string of deteriorating vignettes.
Let me live in your blood, your fingertips, your taste buds.
There is no version of her story that you have a duty to preserve, no canon.
Keep her entirely as you will, she is yours now. Do not remember me.
When I die, do not list my accomplishments for the admiration of strangers.
There is no need to catalogue those things that I did well.
Whatever I achieved of any worth I gave to you.
All I was is yours, when I die.
