Funeral // Reincarnation

trigger warning: mention of death

As a kid, I dreamed of my funeral

Mourning headbands, soft murmurs and loud wailings

Shimmer of tears glow on beloved cheeks

Here incense smoke blur all portraits

Yet I hope they remember my face

Now buried in anguish and gradual decay

An inevitable demise, a return to ashes

As a kid, I dreamed of my funeral

What was the cause of death? Natural.

She was shredded by the biting winds

Or spread out too thin like a dandelion

To a point of no existence, yet spring up

from the earth, everywhere she goes, a flower.

Then blown away again

Fragments of non-self drifting apart.

When I met you, I told you about my funeral

One wintry night, racing against the hours

You heard my words, but still we fell

Into kisses in the dark, chases of the spirals

You reached into till earth and rising wind,

Searching for my fingertips and lips and skin

Layers after layers of dirt, excavated, extracted, exalted

Sometimes life waits in uninspiring calls and careless whispers

In moments of interlacing limbs, of nonchalant touch

You asked me how my life begins.

Things I can’t remember, things I grieve

Things I try to revise and revisit

Life begins with endless nights

Amidst dreams I wake, and utter a silent cry

I learn after each ending, there’s another start

After each funeral, there’s reincarnation.

But now in peace, rest our past lives

I hope you’d bring a parade of roses

to our funeral.

Cover photo by Nguyên Vũ.