Rest in the Earth

A letter to a bug in the Lieby garden

You gaze up at me with eyes smaller than a freckle

Perplexed by my dimensions, you mistake my hair for feathers of a bird

You’ll be something else, but you’re already something more 

My fingers the legs of your arch nemesis, wrinkles, soft spots for you to drown in

My extended finger an old decaying branch, repurposed as a mountaintop just for your little eyes 

The view from above shows you more of the same, dollops of green and mounds of brown 

If you’re lucky, they’ll be a pinkish light protruding pollen glitter

The smile of a blooming bud will fill you with hope for someone other 

but you, you know your future, it’s the same as it’s always been

There’s something frightening about the comfort, knowing exactly where you’ll be in an hour, a day

you’ll never be more than a mile away 

Not while you’re alive, anyways

So you squeeze my finger tight in agony, not sure if you want to hold on or let yourself topple down me

Your beating chest reminds you that it’s time to go back home

To a place you are a fraction of, to a place you would have loved to know

Spend your life avoiding beer cans and dreaming about the garden gnomes

I’m so glad you trust me now, and I hope you can trust her

To bury you in a place even more beautiful than the one you were born

to let you rest in a place where you can see the whole world

-B