Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Table Top Tomb
By Megan Baxter

The grave laid flat like a bed, no warmth from ghostly hip and thigh. All day she slept, and a year later woke remembering only the beginning of the afternoon- rubbing down the hot horses in the barn, heavy with animal scent and the hot hay in the high loft. The curtains grow old and flat in the breeze. Always forgetting, she drinks water lying down, gets wet, needs help changing. If only, if only… She keeps repeating cautions from childhood, always say thank you, never stand behind a horse, don’t touch the woodstove, always circling, had she said thank you? The flat top stone table, no one covers it. A bed for a sleeper, a grave for the dead, a day without conclusion. And heavy the smell of farm animals, and heavy the smell of hay.