death was that sucking, spluttering wet hole inside my stomach
that gripped my brains and rattled them for years
before I stood on the bridge and looked into the dark brown depths
before I obsessed over the comfort of a barrow under the setting sun.
mushrooms are green, red, orange
color is a fact of life
they sprout on corpses and sip on rot
they snack on old flesh and chew on bones.
death was true fate, the most knowable thing I’ve ever cradled in my palm
that gave me calm and let me sigh, emptying out my lungs
after I laid in the static filled room for the stillest of hours
after I bought semi-ancient blades to keep under my mattress, on my mind.
mushrooms are soft, malleable, subtle
gently alive
they complete the cycle
they give meaning to the end.
this week the prompt is ‘mushrooms’. My poem is about how my view on death has developed over time. When I was younger, death was a very scary thing to me. I was scared of dying and of losing the animals/people in my life before I was ready to lose them.
in 2019, I went through a really bad depressive spell. I was very close to committing suicide, but I eventually reached out and was able to start medication. Things have been a lot better since.
however, my view on death has changed for good, and mushrooms are a very good representation of this change. I no longer fear it, but see it as a natural end to things. It’s refreshing to know that things will continue to live after death, and even that death can contribute to another creatures’ life.