Photography
Even those who believe they have made peace with death can falter at the feeling of cold beneath their hands, when the warmth fades from a body they know so well. The fear comes from not knowing what waits beyond that final breath. Maybe judgement, nothingness, or some place even whispers never reach.
A bird falls from grace beneath the grass, a deer lies herself down among the ferns, a moth closes its wings for the last time. For a while, each body belonged to one small life alone, carrying it through rain and hunger, through summer warmth, through wounds and sleep and every gentle thing that ever touched it.
Then, when it can carry that life no farther, it's time to give it back.
And so, flesh feeds something hungry, and bone settle beneath the soil. Beetles gather, roots grow through what remains, and somewhere above them a flower opens beneath the sun. Lady Nature never turns away from what has died, nor does she shudder at decay.
The fox takes the hare, the worm takes the fallen bird, the roots drink from the earth beneath them, and one day they will all return in much the same way. A body can belong to everything again.
Even a lonely creature who dies without a sound is still taken in by our Lady's loving arms. Even the ones that never learned what they could've been worth, that never became what they might have been, that spent their lives frightened or unseen, or trying and failing not to hurt the things they loved.
She never asks whether it was wanted, whether anyone knew its name, or whether anyone will mourn it. The grass still grows over it, the roots still find it, and something still lives because it was there. What a gift it is to rot.
A bird falls from grace beneath the grass, a deer lies herself down among the ferns, a moth closes its wings for the last time. For a while, each body belonged to one small life alone, carrying it through rain and hunger, through summer warmth, through wounds and sleep and every gentle thing that ever touched it.
Then, when it can carry that life no farther, it's time to give it back.
And so, flesh feeds something hungry, and bone settle beneath the soil. Beetles gather, roots grow through what remains, and somewhere above them a flower opens beneath the sun. Lady Nature never turns away from what has died, nor does she shudder at decay.
The fox takes the hare, the worm takes the fallen bird, the roots drink from the earth beneath them, and one day they will all return in much the same way. A body can belong to everything again.
Even a lonely creature who dies without a sound is still taken in by our Lady's loving arms. Even the ones that never learned what they could've been worth, that never became what they might have been, that spent their lives frightened or unseen, or trying and failing not to hurt the things they loved.
She never asks whether it was wanted, whether anyone knew its name, or whether anyone will mourn it. The grass still grows over it, the roots still find it, and something still lives because it was there. What a gift it is to rot.