I want to say,
“After all, isn’t everyone forgotten eventually?”

& then I remember all the writers,
long gone, whose names are spoken
& whose texts are printed for study

& I remember my mother’s pink granite stone
& how my grandmother cleans stones older than hers
to make the names legible
so they’ll be remembered

Do I want to be remembered?
I guess, even if I’m buried under an unmarked tree,
that decision isn’t up to me