Proclamation of Life

If I die...

I would want you to know that you are beautiful in the present tense.

If I die,

I would want you to know that you are fully capable of loving,

and full of the right to be loved.

If I die,

My spirit will continue, somewhere else -

whether place, dimension, time of the unknown -

From else I came, to where I’ll go.

If I die,

I would want you to know I was the daughter of many;

of a universe creating itself, unfolding unique into my skin,

with ingrained and changed adaptations through generations,

that birthed me, sang to me, fed me, and killed me.

If I die,

I want you to look in the mirror

and find the starlight shining ever so slightly yet brightly from

the two black spheres placed specifically to find light,

and shed the right amount of dark,

to balance the burning, and cope with the pitch.

If I die,

I live at the same time,

resurrected again like the day I was born:

life out of death out of life,

like a sunflower from the unfolding earth

made of sacrificed sunflowers...

I will rise again, like those before, and those to come.

If I die,

Your God sings

through me like the God of our ancestors,

like the God of our kin,

like our heart sings

to one stream of life craving life;

craving creativity, carrying on,

despite death in the face of a fight for life.

If I die...

A poet writing

through the rewriting of the universe,

trying new stanzas in the waves,

crescendos in the mountains,

the adagio of the textured burnt orange sunset,

the unmatched mediums of the rain forest,

the silent brush stroke of the hummingbird across air:

in living art, we are a part.

If I die...

I wanted you to know that you are beautiful in the present tense.