The earth did not take me when I was nine, and I hated the earth for it. Each time I came to the place where the lake met the park and pressed my back into the soggy grooves at the boat launch, I flattened and flattened. When I couldn’t sink any lower into the dirt I cried for my grandmother to come push me the rest of the way down. My father put a chocolate bar in her casket when she died, 90% dark. I reached inside to make sure it hadn’t melted yet, and when its wrapper gave under my trembling hand I collapsed. So really, it’s no surprise that when my body surged up and out, aging as humans do into unwieldy mortality, I wanted to pick my death the way a farmer picks from his bushes and feeds himself his own fruits, concerned not with the way their sugars flow. To enjoy from beginning to end, even out of the webs of my fingers. When the lake broke its banks last August, my love and I returned to lay in the mud. I did not push my hands into the dirt. I did not ask to sink. Even the sliding mud held us steady and alive, allowing me to feel for once a future with no certain end. Its sugared, bitter taste. Two women old and grinning who open their tethered palms to see between their sweet hands no happy geode of pills.
