Alexis Foran
“For all I know, I’m burying empty boxes.”
For all I know, you’re right.
Groundskeeper, cemetery keeper, creeper,
grave digger.
Headstone washer, mausoleum security.
Weed whacker, riding the grass above boxes of bodies
chambers of rotted clothes, hair and nails grown as body withers, casket descender.
Flower planter, land tender, grass keeper, reaper.
Scythe swinger, shovel hauler, grave cementer, dig out
the dirt that lodges deep in your sinuses, you can’t breathe this debris
no matter how hard you try. Your manager doesn’t care when you don’t wear a mask.
The mown grass sharp and stinging, the trimmed bushes scratch. Flowers die, thrown out. Dirt
gets overturned. You keep filling in graves. So, come home, Conor, and
forget about suffocating in grave dirt. Blow black snot in the shower.
Come home and forget you’re burying all your friends.
Grave tender, grave keeper, an epitaph for us both.
Weed the flowers above their graves. Tend to the consecrated lawn,
but the fields of wild prairie grass, don’t touch, Conor.
Don’t touch the wild violets, Lily of the Valley, leave it to grow.
Grave filler, cemetery constructor, mausoleum protector. Cement box for a casket to inhabit.
Lover, caretaker, vault.