—YOU KNOW I’D LIKE TO KEEP MY CHEEKS DRY TODAY

Duped

I died today, but you weren’t there to notice.  They buried me in a field of elder straw where the shrews and deer mice play.  A herd of elk thundered over me, their hooves punching fists into the soil around my coffin.  In the distance, a murder of crows tore a hole through the lining of the sky before ripping themselves apart.  By nightfall, the rains came in torrents, seeping through the ground like hands sifting sludge, tapping on my wood-and-brass casket.  For a moment, I thought it was you, coming to see me, to say you missed me, but then I realized you were gone, and that I was dead.