After the Memorial

after the memorial –
in which memories
were returned again to life
and salty tears and poems and
muffled sobs from books
and hearts made
these pixels shimmer and
made them stand and groove –
we said good bye
and didn’t walk from the church to the hall
where
strange quarter sandwiches
and potato salad
held forth on the justness
of bodies
and the turning over of earth –
while patient dogs
waited at home
for bags of scraps
and bones.
and too many
flowers still
needed arranging.
no.
we clicked leave meeting
and we lowered the screen
and we stumbled back alone
to the crummy hole where
last we’d seen
our hero fall.

monte merrick

This article appears in Sanctuary in the Storm.