poem

 Septuagint

The past is a vast cemetery

Of the finished and the dead.

Plots for spinster aunts.

Mausoleums slotted with memories

Like cold stone filing cabinets.

Cavernous pits for all the rest,

Half interred with cracked bones, locks of hair

Clattering piles of dulled bracelets,

Scuffed shoes, unmatched, without laces,

Crisply folded handwritten letters,

Yellowed soft like lost books of Septuagint,

Feelings you always thought would last forever.

 

Even my love for you 

Had its own assigned grave.

Names and dates deeply carved.

But we are here, the two of us, alone,

The weather unseasonably warm,

Both bearing bundles of vibrant flowers

To set beside its old gray headstone.

12/14/21