The only place I can be
myself is six feet under
-with the worms
those nasty little things,
orange segment sacs jammed
with goo and muck.
We’ll lay there, their rum
and crooked bodies, slick with
mucus, interlaced with my fingers,
nestled in my neck, cradled
in my arms. I’ll let them nuzzle into
my body for as long as they want,
feeling their membranous folds
digesting deeper and deeper
into the waning warmth of my rotting flesh,
inching their way around cracked
and brittle sinew to crawl through hollow veins,
until they are completely settled inside me,
squelching and thrumming about, drowning
out the silence in my once beating thoracic,
and when the earth wettens,
they will hatch out of my
chest, traveling through
the new mud, writhing and
contracting over my barrow
and into the overcast air, to
pollute the fresh black asphalt,
-so you can step on me again.