When does a body become a thing?
When it stares from beyond the glass
At the conglomeration of people surrounding it,
Shedding tears on a Persian carpet.
When it cannot smell the patchwork
of dead flowers laying on top of it.
When the embalming turns it into a museum wax figurine.
When the skin becomes cold and yellow, cheeks – icy and hollow
And the limbs – unmovable.
When does a body become a thing?
When it attracts the attention of a curious child,
Makes him ask – Is he not breathing?
When the weeping becomes its lullaby,
When collective grief invites it into its final communion with life
So that it too can lament its body
When it stealthily listens to the whispers of the neighborhood gossip
And the news of its beloved, forgotten relatives
And the cathartic laughter of its wife
And the muffled sobs of its daughter in the moonless night.
Until the earth swallows it into her heart,
Until it is summoned to its primordial condition,
Decomposing, fragmenting back into
the smallest particles of existence it was constructed of,
Forever quenching the thirst of a nearby tree.
When does a body become a thing?
When I want to touch it, caress the corpse’s face
And play with the receding scattered grays on the scalp.
When its expression puts me at peace,
Makes me want to stare into its sleepy eyes,
And comprehend death in an instant.
This natural, corporeal death of nothingness.
This welcoming, beautiful death of the oblivion.
Writer | Mariam Beshidze ’27 | mbeshidze27@amherst.edu
Editor | Kevin Roodnauth ’26 | kroodnauth26@amherst.edu