Grave
by Helena Edge
In Arlington, 639 acres: rows of white gleam like teeth in the sunlight. Next to your father’s cross, a Buddhist wheel and the Star of David.
Above, a congregation field of psychopompic discourse. Angels and gods commune with children in the dirt, coaxing. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is trapped.
Below is scooped out earth and worms cheated out of a meal.
To visit your father, you go to that airless place. Your lungs, tightly bound like the ribs of your father by coffin steel.
You think it’s good he doesn’t need to breathe, lung out, lung in.
Dead bodies breathe differently than living ones. They breathe into the earth, following the tunnels of the worms.
You picture your father’s face and can only see a 2D picture, clamped shut in a scrapbook. His eyes, like your eyes.
You didn’t see his face at the wake. Too young to see a face not a face but a formaldehyde simulacrum of a face.
It’s important that his bones be ready for the kingdom. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis.
You are one of the lucky ones. To have a father who came back from Iraq in one piece. He is buried next to a woman who was blown apart from herself.
A dogwood grows a few stones down. Branches ripple in the wind with all the sky to speak to.