The Worms Will Dream in Color | Fiona Glenn-Keough

One day, the world will fold me into itself:

the earth will open like a tired mouth 

and I will enter without resistance, 

soft, surrendered, 

almost grateful.

And when I am six feet underground 

with bugs eating my brain, 

they will get visions of you. 

They will smell what you smelled like; 

they will hear you call my name.

They will experience unimaginable wonders

as they feast on the part of my brain that houses you. 

Even in death, 

you are a contagion of beauty– 

a strange, radiant fungus 

blooming in the most unlikely places.

The worms will dream in color.

Roots will curve toward the memory of your laughter

like instruments tuning themselves 

to a frequency only I once heard.

They will not know what you were, 

only that something divine 

once made a home in the soft tissue 

of a creature who loved you.

That will be enough: 

for even the smallest things to feel joy 

as they take me apart, 

bit by bit, 

and find you in every piece.

---

Fiona Glenn-Keough is an English major at UAlbany who loves writing poems that blend the strange and familiar. This is her first time being published in ARCH. In her free time she enjoys playing tennis, reading, and spending time with family.