Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Mother
By Megan Baxter

A white tombstone inscribed ‘Mother’ and below, a metal box, fastened to the stone.

I leave to you the ashes from the hearth, they are still warm to the touch, glowing. I leave you the charged particles of wool dust, from the spinning wheel, they crackle against each other. I leave the clipping of all your hair, from your first haircuts, it is so fine and fair. And the tooth of my favorite barn cat, and a feather of particular brilliance, and blue eggshells that I found once, when I was a girl and have kept all these years. In this box: the smell of milk, the sound of kneading bread, the shine of my best, Sunday shoes, a love letter written to me when I was your age by a man who would not become my husband. In this box, a heart like the witch wants in the fairy story, bleeding, moving as if it still was needed, and the heart beats out, mother, mother, mother. It has forgotten my true name.

The charged box draws lightening. Blackens the stone. Crackles with electricity, charged it smells like burnt wool and ash. The grass grows oddly, in a pattern like veins, brown and green, dead, alive. It is not second life. Her bones roll outwards, spread into the graves of others. Today, I am scared away by a family of killdeers. Their eggs, speckled blue, rest up against the stone, a collection of jewels, a hatch of mushrooms. I had wanted to touch the box, to feel its chill or reflected heat, against my palm, feel the metal in my life lines, in my love lines, in my heart lines. It is polished, nearly translucent with age. Inside, I see a womb and the makings of life, rust red, mammalian.