Lunatic

Lunatic

A profoundly beautiful name people often call me whenever I speak of death.

Some people think it is strange that I speak of death so gently. But the truth is, I do not think of death because I wish for it. I think of it because one day it will find all of us, and I have always believed that the things we cannot escape deserve our honesty, not our fear.

I desire when my time comes, it finds me after I have loved enough. After I have watched enough sunsets without checking the time. After I have held the hands I wanted to hold a little longer. After I have laughed until my stomach hurt and cried without hiding my tears.

After I have lived. Only after I have truly lived.

And when that day arrives, I do not want people to imagine darkness. I hope they imagine the sky. An endless, gentle sky that makes you look up and forget every worry for a moment and has always felt like home to me.

Haply that is why I dream of becoming a pilot. Not because I want to escape the earth, but because every part of me has always belonged a little to the clouds.

And when I am gone, don't leave me to flames. Lay me somewhere quiet. Somewhere flowers can grow.

There is something almost unfair about how much I have loved flowers. I have admired them from a distance my entire life, careful not to get too close, while my body reminded me that beauty sometimes comes with its own barriers.

I could never bury my face in a field of blossoms. I could never stay among them for long. So let me rest beneath them instead. Let the flowers claim me in the end. Let roses bloom above my dreams. Let daisies dance where my heart once beat.

Let little children pick petals from the garden above me without ever knowing my name. I think I would like that. Not to be remembered as a photograph on a wall.

Not as a date carved into stone. But as something gentle. A flower blooming where there was once a girl who loved them.

And if those who love me come looking for me, i don't want them to search the grave. I wish them to  look at the sky when it is impossibly blue. I hope they watch the flowers sway when there is no wind.

I want them to notice the quiet moments that arrive without warning and make the heart ache with gratitude. Because if any part of me remains, I do not think it will be beneath the earth.

I think it will be there in the sky I spent my life reaching for, and in the flowers I spent my life loving from afar. And that to me, feels less like an ending and more like finally coming home.

I am coming home...

       🖉~Jyoti