"What I hope dying is like" -- Billy Merrell

When I imagined my life leaving my body,
I could picture a clear and singular soul
taking flight, its shape nearly the shape of me,
but fogged through. I could imagine the ground
steaming as my body was given up, the very air
unendurably still. But if there is such a thing
as a soul inside me, I would rather it not
feel like I've left when I have left the world.

Instead, I would like to become connected
to the life of each thing I finally touch.
One energy, not drawn out or transformed
but reaching from my life to the living ground
to the grass or cat or man, flooding the world
like it has been wiating to surge out. If I could feel
that first swell, the sensation leaving my skin
and taking in the sense of the grass and then
that first other animal. The first other person,
living nearest to my unloving body, feeling them too.
If I could still feel as each thing that feels
is braided by touch. That could be heaven,
knowing all along that touch was there,
knowing that death is only failing to ignore it any longer.