When They Come for Me

I will be on the lawn, dancing
With the apple trees and barberries
And patchy, too long grasses
And wildflowers and weeds
And the skeletons I have set free

When they come for me
I will wear my Sunday best
Snapdragons behind my ears
Fireflies in my eyes
And a cloak of forbidden dreams.

When they come for me
With their oversized shields
And angry arsenal
I will tell the names of pain
Like the sirens in the Aegean Sea

Their ears are stuffed with wax
They do not hear
But the song is not for them

Nor is it for those who give a sharp nod
And say, “it is good.
It should happen to all of them.”

When they come for me
I will be tightrope-walking the top of the fence
With the neighbor’s cat
Who kicks off a ‘keep out’ sign
In an impressive feat of feline parkour

When they come for me
I will be wearing turquoise
Drinking kombucha
And weaving tinsel in my hair

I will play the ukulele
And sing in my country voice
They hear only gibberish
But my song is not for them
Nor for those who shrug and say,
“What business is it of mine?”

When they come for me
I will inexplicably remember the laundry
The water boiling over on the stove
The TBR.
I will realize that I never learned to blow glass,
Make sushi,
Or read Finnish.

When the dog’s ears perk
I will tell him to run
and hide under the neighbor’s RV

When they come for me
The night wind will swirl leaves and dry twigs
Around my legs
Asking me to dance
Then it will pat my hair
As if it knows I’m too young for it.

If my blood is sprayed
Across the white wall of my shed
If it sinks into the garden
I hope the apple trees will soak it up
And there will be a little bit of me in them.

When they come for me
I will dance
On my shattered art
And hot brass
And I will sing
Even when it becomes incoherent
I will sing.

They don’t understand, but no matter.
The song is not for them.
It is for the ones who whisper in hushed tones,
“it’s not right, is it?’
They ones who say, a bit louder, “we need to put an end to it.”

There are clouds overhead
And a star struggling to make itself seen
I do not know if I will have regrets
I like to think not

It depends, I suppose,
On who saw the star
On who heard the song.

(Thanks to feral historian and DreamStudio for help with the artwork.)