You are the body.
We are the grave.
Alive and well
we, the grave, bury
you, the body.
We tear open your veins
you melt away and the blood
crawls between your wrinkles and
crumbles between the rubble
of your body that
groans and
moans.
We drink your sweat
suck you empty and dry
and you waste away and die
in your grave, but you're not yet
dead, only naked and brown
without greens and whites.
We mark you, dig
your grave in you between
the mountains and the valleys
that mark you and you
breathe, slowly, and you
sag a little more.
We are the body.
You are the grave.
Alive and well
you, the grave, bury
us, the body.
***
Author's note: you are of course free to read the poem however you like, but I thought it might be fun to say a little about the inspiration for this poem. The first line popped in my head while on a hike in Switzerland and it's part description of the landscape, part generalised about climate change and the destruction of nature. But from there, there are also layers about mortality and how we treat each other.