Saturday, October 16

The Only Stoneless Grave

Doesn’t feel like home yet
Driving to the new house
Fifteen minutes in
Night turns me around
Up a gravel road
Lined by sentinel trees
Which loom over my decision
Frightening me almost
But not enough to turn back

Slowly, so as not to interrupt
Those who are sleeping
Gravel crushes against itself
Underneath the foreign tires
As headlights illuminate stones
And I creep the car forward
And backward again
Attempting to locate in limited light
One spot in particular

Even though wind blows
I know it’s not the cold
And I’m unsure if it’s the darkness
Or the mission I’ve undertaken
That gives me these shivers
For which this scarf does nothing
As I stand in this garden
Which I haven’t been in
For a long while

Sometimes one has to just
Do a thing instead of thinking
So that it’s not too frightening a task
You taught me that
So I park my vehicle
And quickly shut the door
With myself on the other side
Letting pride to take over
And lead the rest of the way
To the frightening destination

There is still no tomb stone
Just a plastic marker in the grass
Broken rusty and dirty
Waiting to be replaced
With little inspiration
Especially when compared
To the one next to it
Bold dark stone with tiny stars
Given flowers unlike this one

Unsure why I’ve come
Standing before the expectant site
Afraid of what to say
That it might sound wrong somehow
To me or the invisible
But honestly it was never meant
To sound like poetry
Just simple honesty
Straight forward honesty

So it comes out
Accusations for the hurt
And expression of the pain
That might have been prevented
By the absence of a choice
That is frighteningly permanent
And regretfully affecting
Providing questions to which
The answers will never satisfy

Strange I suppose.
Home is where the heart is.
Lame phrase.
What happens when
Your heart has been broken?
Are you homeless?
Forever lost between worlds?
As I stand in the garden,
Before the only stoneless grave.