Bonefields
By Jay Hulme
When you die, they say,
we'll know who you truly were; vultures
of morality, picking us out of ourselves.
Perverse sky burial, bodies stretched out
on sky towers of hatred. No ritual in this
but the pain.
This will not be how it ends.
I refuse my uncreation. These wings
become me; this splintering holds me.
My marrow returns to the sky, the earth,
the creation from whence I came. They say
once, my atoms were birds; they become so
again. They say stars. I say vultures.
When we lay down together
in the bone fields of despair you must tell me:
how can you fear an ending that's the same
as where you began?
I am often to be found caring for the unknown dead, who emerge, shattered, from their ancient and forgotten graves. Collecting them, burying them, praying them back to their rest. It makes me think, sometimes, of the transphobic refrain that in a thousand years our bones will somehow betray us.