Return

Deep down at the bottom of the pit, a voice issues, resonating forward, shaking the stalagmites in its thundering command: Return.
I, hearing it, am called wildly, leaving thicket bodies who waft always the same way,
My lungs pulling air with every ounce of their will, detaching from bronchiole in the strain,
A response which ends only in one outcome: Return.
I do not stop to wonder what it means,
or rather, I do, but silence an echoing voice which says: no
I allow the din of the crowds to drown it out
allow the ache of the muscles straining as they pop
and pull to convey me past the point of caring
about the objection's meaning.
I am a one-man bundle
of ankles and wrists
and fingers crawling, clawing, cutting back,
back into wilderness and the dark which calls
in its sweet tenor,
its sugar breath: return.
I will return!
I will bury me in this pit,
dissolve back to constituent pieces.
My original Adam,
untethered from the molecule

Let the whole fade
unbothered by me,
Comfortable again
in the gentle
silence of
annihilation.