By: Shelby McLoudrey
The tree buried the tombstone, but I dug the grave
The grave a capsule in the ground forever containing silenced screams
Imagining the screams still deafen my ears
For a child who once had song, her innocents pure long ago gone
A child’s innocence is precious, but innocents can’t survive murder
The helplessness of bows and ribbons was an invitation to hurt her
Songs are invitations for healing but can’t dig death from its grave
Any more than putting flowers on a casket stops bodies from rotting underneath
A legacy of corruption makes murder seem normal
For some people healing is planting bodies inside trench mortar
Life holds moments but death holds memories
Given the choice I’d rather have moments not her remains
I still reminisce of times when she held my hand
Her five small fingers gently interlaced in mine
But then I was handed a pill too hard to swallow
I wished instead it be a personal gallow
A man came a long with aim to disembody, and from his misery
Buried his rusted blade inside her warm body
Both childhoods stolen one from a blade the other from exposure
To live long, to die young, both can be tragedies at its core
I came by her grave with roses in my hands,
to lay above the willow’s roots and say goodbye one last time
While he buried innocents I liberated anger,
As she laid in her grave I cultivated her unjustified murder
They say never act in anger for you may go too far
For the roots of someone’s grief can easily be misguided
But beneath the willow is a secret no one knows about
Most Secrets have a price to pay, most but not all
I dragged my secret to the grave, along with my revenge
The grave that holds my heart is tragic, the other well deserved it
I dug the trench beneath the tree, and sealed it with chains and mortar
I buried the murderer and I buried my soul in the grave right beside hers
