I don’t want to be a study.
A lone sun-bleached fossil
Fine, but before you remove me and dissect, let me rest a while.
A millennia past, a millennia future.
That’s what I want.
As the waves lap closer and closer to my
Wind-eroded calcium chest-plate.

So, leave me to weather a while longer.
To rest in the place between,
Long gone, yet still here.
A long, drawn-out sigh
Like a knife drawn across a whetstone
Scraping and hoarse
But free and soaring.

A death rattle apotheosis
I’m so afraid of pain.
Do I linger and fight off the hordes?
Or let those anthropologists get me?
I don’t think anyone wants to die.
We’re all afraid of life, some more so than others.
I’ll know the answer in another millennia’s time, let me rest.

Maybe I’ll cremate, leave them dumbfounded.
Unable to discover my last particles on their tea-stained treasure map
As I drift to distant shores
And settle new lands and feed the earth.
All their own.
Maybe that’s what they mean
By final resting place.