circling

You can find Sophia on Instagram @socasnyder

I always had a feeling that I would freeze to death. That that would be how I’d go. The cold.

It’s not quite cold enough for that.

It is cold, but not that cold.

I guess I was half right. I died in a cold place, but it wasn’t the cold that got me.

Death: "My Irony Surpasses All Others" by Odilon Redon (1889)

What’s that law? The one about matter?

Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Something like that.

Matter is never created and it is never destroyed. Only changed. We are never lost, only scattered.

Bury it, burn it, or scatter it for the birds—it will continue. We all have this in common. I am not special in my continuing, certainly not unique.

The coffee grounds might be unique though.

“Shouldn’t we leave her something?” Larry asked.

“Leave her something? She’s dead,” Pedro answered. It sounded a little callous, but it wasn’t untrue.

Then all three of them stood over me for maybe thirty seconds before Mia finally spoke up. “She was a coffee nut. We can scatter the grounds for her after breakfast.”

So that’s what they did. They made their little campfire breakfast—unpleasant packets of freeze-dried biscuits and gravy, plus decent coffee. They kept staring at me while they ate. Mia had covered up the part of my head that had collided with the rock. She’d draped her scarf over the ugly wound and then arranged my limbs so they weren’t all splayed out awkwardly from my fall. When they were finished, they trailed coffee grounds around my body like a chalk-outline on pavement. They weren’t going to waste supplies on me—like Pedro said, I was dead—but they still wanted to leave a little symbolic offering. It was sweet. I wish I could tell them I appreciated it.

Then they hiked onward.

It is an isolated mountainside, this. Far from any roads or towns. They couldn’t have carried me. The earth is too cold for them to have even attempted to bury me with their little trowels. It will, I realize, probably be quite a while before anyone can retrieve my body. I should get comfortable.

Since I am incapable of movement, getting comfortable entails merely a mental challenge to myself:

Get comfortable with this place. Accept the chill and the little rocks digging into your back and, just to the side, the larger rock, the one you struck your head on, the constant reminder of your death.

I’m not doing too poorly at the whole getting comfortable thing. I could stay here for a while, I think—but then the birds start to circle. Suddenly, for the first time, I realize I may not actually be here for very long at all. I’m in a place where it will be difficult for people to get to my body. It won’t be hard at all for the birds.

Turkey vultures. It’s not hard to tell that those are the gliding shapes above me. They barely flap their wings. It looks like they’re soaring by the will of God alone, even though I vaguely understand the physics behind gliding. As they get lower, I can make out their red heads. They’re so big. It makes fear spark and rise inside my chest. It feels stupid now—fear. I’m dead. There’s nothing left to fear.

Except if I can feel the chill of the air and the rocks under my back, surely I will also feel the tearing beaks of the vultures.

They’re so exquisitely graceful in the air, but when they land they approach me with drunken, awkward hops. I feel the urge to quicken my breath, to hyperventilate even, but, of course, I cannot breathe at all.

The first bird makes it to me. It regards me briefly with one hazel eye. (I can see through its beak from this angle; its nostrils create a tunnel straight through its face. There’s something skeletal about it.) Then it bends in toward me, bumps its head against my forearm, and insinuates the hooked tip of its beak between my glove and sleeve. It tears at the vulnerable skin and tendons of my inner wrist.

Like I feel the chill, like I feel the rocks, I do feel the bite. Something like panic roils inside of me, again the urge to hyperventilate, the urge to scream and roll away and bat my arms at the creatures.

I cannot.

I can only remain still and be eaten.

The other birds join the first one. Some wrestle with my warm layers while the bigger ones go straight for the bare, soft parts of me. I lose my eyes quickly. No more staring aimlessly at the sky.

The pain twists around my nerves. The fear of every bite pulses almost like a heartbeat. I can’t take this. I can’t take this. I have to take this. I can’t take this.

And then I think of the young.

I think of the chicks. It’s that time of year—most of these vultures will have a pair of chicks hidden in a cave or hollow somewhere. Those little creatures need to eat. Just like we needed the freeze-dried rations, they need their parents to bring them meals.

Meals like me.

I am suddenly, powerfully grateful that Larry, Pedro, and Mia could not carry me to civilization. I am grateful not to be in a grave or a crematorium. I am grateful to be eaten, not embalmed. I am grateful I didn’t freeze to death in some lifeless place, my skin an icy shell around my soft, useless insides. How sterile that would have been. How heartless.

A vulture rips a strip of something wet and vital out of my belly. I imagine, as vividly as I can, that strip of me being regurgitated into the eager mouth of a baby bird. That’s me! That’s me! I want to shout. I want to spin in dizzy circles on this mountainside and point at the vultures coasting through the blue sky—I’m creating that! I’m allowing that! They couldn’t do that without me! I am in them now! I am in the next generation of vultures! And when the vultures leave, what smaller, slower creatures will nibble on what remains of me? Oh, the generations I will foster!

The panic from before has ebbed away. The pain has become something I appreciate. My last sensations, before I am unfeeling molecules in the cells of other things. I am grateful for these last sensations, just as I am grateful to be becoming those other things. Not me, not myself, not whole, but always me, always extant, always here.

The vultures slip in the coffee grounds sometimes, but then they regain their balance with a flap of their wings or, sometimes, by latching on to me with their hooked beaks. They are the ballerinas and I am the barre. Silly thought. I relish it. It could be my last silly thought.

Not long now, I think. Not long at all. Many of my bones are poking out into the mountain air. I don’t think I can keep holding on to awareness much longer. Many pieces of me are missing, eaten. Moving on. On to the next, then the next, then the next.

No, not long now. Sentences are more difficult. Words. Phrases. Words? I’m not sure. There’s something. I used to think. I wonder. I wonder.

Oh, that vulture had its head inside my ribcage. Lovely.

It’s wearing me.

I’m on it.

Dripping over it.

Draping.

Can’t quite—

I can’t quite—

Why?

When the—

My shoes are still on. That’s funny.

See, if I—

Oh.

Oh.

Yes.

This is...

I’m flying.

About the author:

Sophia Snyder (she/her) is an introspective, overcaffeinated writer and dramaturg who never lets her characters forget that they have bodies, in all their gruesome, gratifying, gooey glory. Her dark rom-com, Veronica, was produced by Theatre by Development in Philadelphia. Her new play, The Dissection of One Billy Burke, will be a part of TBD’s Clippings in Philly Theatre Week 2026. You can find more of her short-form prose in Sliced Up Press’ Bloodless anthology and Belovedzine’s first and third issues, Love Letters and Flesh.