Decorating Day
When I die I want to grow into moss.
I want to decay in a rich and fertile way
and feed the roots and the worms and the dirt
like those lost babies at the home cemetery did.
The ones who didn’t make it through the last pandemic,
the ones with no names and no headstones.
I plant plastic flowers next to their makeshift markers,
Olive Hill fire bricks growing crooked out of a patch of green
so lush it tickles and soothes my bare feet.
I can’t stop myself from lying down in the shade of the ash tree
to feel the damp ground on my hot shoulders.
And I coo to my unnamed babies buried deep beneath the moss
and assure them, they’re gone but not forgotten.
As long as I’m on this side of the soil, they’ll keep on getting flowers.
6 thoughts on "Decorating Day"
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I love it. You captured the moment well.
So Good!
love the line “Olive Hill fire bricks . . .”. In fact I love that the poem
evokes a place a time a need a hope.
Gorgeous. Makes me think when I was a child I would visit this boy’s grave behind the church house. I never knew him, but I sat with him for years. It felt like an important thing to do.
You had me at the first line.
Powerful!