April 27th, 2018
HARRIET BUTLER
1837 – 1870
AND INFANT DAUGHTER
AUG – SEPT. 1870
I wonder if she killed you
and I wonder if the others’ tears
fed the city that would soon
spring up around you.
You never saw
how their sadness
turned to brick and mortar
used to hold hopes for a new life,
used to hold off a slow death,
used to hold in the last breaths
of a jaywalker’s world.
Now, you rest between two trees.
In the summer, their leaves shade you from white heat.
Two birds fight in the distance.
Oh, maybe they’re flirting.
It can be so hard to label natural inclinations.
It’s a problem to try to understand love at all
when most graves have such a common tale to tell.
Jason Preu 