First, your breath falters, oxygen abandoned
Metabolism shudders to a dreadful silence
Enzymes awaken in the stillness,
Softly unraveling cell by cell, as
Livor mortis blooms beneath your skin,
A bruised flower of purple, spreading

Rigor mortis clenches your limbs in finality,
Tissues soften, surrendering to decay
In the caverns of your gut,
Bacteria feast, their banquet of death begins
You are mine now, my sweet forgotten

The body swells, a grotesque monument,
Foulness rises, thick as smoke in the air
Your skin blisters, tearing like old paper,
Blood vessels collapse, rivers turned to dust
Blowflies arrive in silent reverence,
Their eggs are like offerings to the rot
Here, in the shadow of the flesh,
Decay sings its ancient hymn

Your skin loosens, sloughing away
As the body cracks open,
A vault of ruin
Maggots dance within,
Devouring your softness with mechanical hunger,
And darkened fluids spill, like ink,
Drawing death’s final lines
The flesh liquefies,
Consumed by mouths of the earth

As the insects retreat, their work complete,
Your body thins, drying into dust
What remains is skin, cartilage, bone,
Stripped and skeletal,
The earth beneath you swells richly
With your decomposed gift

Now, only bone and fragments of skin remain,
Bleached by the wind, the sun’s relentless burn
The elements grind even the skeleton to nothing
You return to dust,
Swept away by the breath of the world
The earth reclaims its own

From the soil you were born,
To the soil you surrender,
A silent echo absorbed into the pulse
Of roots and stone
Welcome home