BB Grey–musings

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

When I Die

Bury me beneath the hush of pine,
where resin weeps in golden threads
and roots murmur secrets to the soil.

Mark me not with chiseled stone,
no name, no weight of letters—
let the wind be my epitaph,
let the rain be my requiem.

Let me rot into breath,
let the earth unmake my bones,
until marrow becomes mist,
until sinew turns to song.

Do not seek me in the places of the world,
not in the brittle paper of old photographs,
not in the aching echoes of a name once called.
Let memory unshackle me—
let it unspool into something vast,
something without tether.

Think instead of the spaces between—
the hush before the storm,
the pause between the tides,
the quiet ache of waking from a dream
you cannot recall but still remember.

For I am not beneath the pine,
not in the decay, not in the gone.
I am the pulse of air between leaves,
the hush of snowfall, the glint on water.

And when you wonder what it is to be free,
know that I am beside you, whispering:
All this was never mine to keep.
All this was never yours to hold.
Only the will— it still lives.

Until you are with me.