LAST WISH

Emma Weber

I don’t want to be buried on sacred ground. Or in sacred ground. I don’t want the silence of life to escape me in death. If my lips never work again, and my voice fades from existence, I want at least to hear the laughter of the living. So bury me on the top of a hill where the children play. Where their pants become dampened at the bottom from climbing up the grass clinging with dew in the morning. Where the backs of their shirts become damp with the sweat of the rising. Where their laughter slips through the cracks in the earth to reach my decomposing ears. Where I hear their bodies crash and roll down the hill to beg their parents for a midday meal. Laughter and voices and screeching and life overpowering my death and the small stinging cuts of the grass as they roll down and down and down. Keep me away from the silence of sacred ground.