Buried Alive

For just a moment, as we lower your pine box into the wet earth, I’m convinced we’re burying you alive.

You’d laugh at me, standing here all damp and matted and wrinkled in my fancy suit as we place you in the ground, in amongst the tangled roots and skipping stones and fishing worms. You’d laugh at the city boy, come back home like the prodigal son himself, clutching a leather wallet crammed with cash and empty plastic sleeves where family photos are supposed to go. 

The first shovelful hits the lid with that lifeless ‘thud’ you only hear when dirt strikes a coffin, and I’m once again convinced we’re burying you alive. The math of it perplexes me, sends me dizzy like when we used to swing round and round and round in the old tire by the barn. If you’re not dead, you’re alive, alive in the box, alive in the box that we’re burying. And you’re not dead, because I see you now, see you standing there between the maple trees with all the golden light of summer in your hair and face and eyes, and yet I know you’re also in the box, the box that tamp, tamp, tamp is now covered with dirt and at rest here in the woods behind your parents’ house.

            The paradox buzzes my head like a mosquito as I crawl down your parent’s dirt driveway, tree branches slapping at the hood of my car. If you’re alive because you can’t be dead, then you’re alive in a box in the ground. Which means you’re dead.

            The driveway ends and I sit with a choice: left to the city, or right to the woods. I turn right and drive, drive, drive, dirt road growing rougher, trees growing thicker, air growing hazier.

            And I go back.

            Back through overgrown years and mossy days. Back through lazy afternoon sunsets and lemonade on the porch and nights on the dock. Back through yeses that should have been noes, and noes that should have been yeses.

            I drive faster and faster going back and back and back until my car disappears and my fancy suit becomes ragged overalls and I’m running, running, running, dirt road hot on my bare feet, fading sunlight warm on my face, and all the crickets in the world singing their evening songs as I find the loose board in the fence bordering Hadley’s field. And I know I’ll find the path we made on the other side, the one lined with white stones from the creek. And I’ll run, run, run, down the path and through the woods, run all night, run until I find that place where all the past and present and future merge together and disappear like early-morning mist.

And there you’ll be, leaning over the bridge railing above Miller’s pond, wrinkling your nose at all the stars in heaven.