I don’t visit you in the cemetery.
Ten years ago I waited my turn
To drop a handful of dirt on the box
With you inside.
A week later, there was grass seed spread
On the dirt-clump rectangle.
Two months later,
Grass,
but still no headstone.
I haven’t been back.
On Tuesday nights I sit in our booth at that bar on the corner.
It’s a Mexican place now, so I order fajitas instead of fries.
September at the county fair,
I stand an hour in line for our favorite ride
And they strap in a stranger beside me.
Sometimes I order your favorite beer,
And sometimes I listen to your favorite bands,
And when I remember you talking, your voice is theirs.
Sometimes I walk by the empty corner where our house used to be.
And I sit on porches where you used to sit.
And I pass the building where you used to work.
And I talk to the people you used to talk to.
Everything about you is Past Tense,
But I’m surrounded with you.
I don’t visit you in the cemetery.
Why should anyone?
Every person who ever lives
Leaves behind 1000 graves
In every place they ever were.
And the rest of us spend our days
Watching where we walk.
Trying to avoid wide open pits
Open and hungry.
And everywhere I go,
I see them.
Some days,
I fall in.
Well this just impaled me
