GRAVE MOTHER

The grass grows thick and green on both sides of this rail fence, each field fed with the early dead. On the right, stone lambs sleep beneath sentinel angels that weep over piles of wilted roses. On the left, granite sheets coated in lichen sink into the dirt, names worn shallow in the stone. And my face, here on the rail, an eroded marker—marble made grey with age. Here lies Margaret—Meg, to those who knew her—which was no one, not even me.

Outside the fence, the stone-toothed hill slopes down into the woods. Trees push back up onto the hill, roots lifting the desecrated stones, wreaking unseen havoc on the small, unconsecrated heads resting below. Roots thread through soft fontanelles.

The fence presses into my tailbone where I straddle the rail. Rose stems prick my right foot, thistle weeds jab my left. Margaret stabs my left, buried deep in her fallopian tomb. I bathe the rail in blood.

I saw her heart beat for a moment—three quick flashes of a fluttering valve on a black screen. But altogether in the wrong place, to the left. I signed the papers on a Thursday, to end her and save me.

When it rains, old roses wash under the fence and down the hill, where they tangle and make a dry bramble arching over the leaning stones. Their seeds dry to husks before they ever take root.

On the right, dates stretch the stones wide, from weeks to years. On the left, a single day, maybe three. On my face, the lines carve a lifetime, counting backward from the day that should have been Margaret’s day. They soaked her in poison on a Friday. They said if I didn’t, I’d die.

I saw her tangle of bones, a compressed nest all in the wrong place. They said some would pass through me and some would become me, but some stayed, and turned to stone. And I mark her, everywhere.

The babes deep inside the high hill rest till rapture, while Margaret and I—we waited for rupture, and now it’s come.

I swing my right leg over the fence, sink my feet into the weeds to the left, turn my back on the rows of angels. The warm coat of blood running down my legs soothes the nettle sting and thistle prick of the bramble by the woods.

I find us a place in the tangle of roots, like the tangle of her stone bones, and I lay us down. Here lie Mother and Margaret, and as I fade into the earth, she’ll remain, watching over me, my own stone angel, my sleeping lamb. And I, the ground for Margaret, all in the wrong place.