Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
Daniel
By Megan Baxter

‘Our Precious Son Daniel, Age 1 Day, 1883’. White marble. The sun blinds against it. No memory. No memory, the fast division of cells, the slow growth, rotation like a planet, the heart and blood shared, the movement within. A lilac near by, I can smell it. One day. One day without the capacity to remember it. White marble. Too large, too grand for a child’s grave marker. Who did they dream of you becoming, small, curled body, curled around lilac roots, rooted in lilac roots?