A designer coffin made death comforting.

Linens that lined it

were soft on my sides.

Pillows placed inside

were cozy clouds in cold soil.

Lost in a year-long illusion,

being buried alive wasn’t half bad—

 

Then I recalled life.

Then came panic.

 

Kicking, scratching the coffin lid

to live again,

brown dirt sprinkled white linens,

exposing coffin comforts

as contorted lies.

Busting through them would mean

six feet of dirt weighing down on me—

 

It means six feet of an infested fleshpile

I’d have to rip through

to reclaim who and what I was.

It means sacrificing the coffin they gave me,

the clothing they made me.

It means crawling through all the slime

they convinced me to sleep in.