Your Cracked Headstone
by Julia Kaeding
Wrought by weather,
lichen and moss
caked to carved marble stone,
names, dates, histories crumbling with time.
Stopping at your headstone,
aged yet standing tall,
I brush the tips of my fingers over the curved marker where you rest.
My feet are planted firmly
over where you’ve been placed,
roots push from my soles to your soul six feet beneath me.
The warmth of your body now gone for decades
replaced by the heat of summer sun’s dusk.
While my palm is pressed gently on the side of your monolith,
wind crawls past my ears,
your voice whispers to me.
Though I don’t know who you were,
I close my eyes
perceive your presence here,
connect to your cracked headstone,
flesh to rock,
with vegetation creeping through,
until your name is read again and
your forgotten life is gone.
lichen and moss
caked to carved marble stone,
names, dates, histories crumbling with time.
Stopping at your headstone,
aged yet standing tall,
I brush the tips of my fingers over the curved marker where you rest.
My feet are planted firmly
over where you’ve been placed,
roots push from my soles to your soul six feet beneath me.
The warmth of your body now gone for decades
replaced by the heat of summer sun’s dusk.
While my palm is pressed gently on the side of your monolith,
wind crawls past my ears,
your voice whispers to me.
Though I don’t know who you were,
I close my eyes
perceive your presence here,
connect to your cracked headstone,
flesh to rock,
with vegetation creeping through,
until your name is read again and
your forgotten life is gone.
Julia Kaeding is a teacher and poet based in Hudson, WI. Her work focuses on the physicality of stress, grief, love, the human experience of nature, and the state of the country in this moment, especially in regard to queer identities. She is a recent graduate of Augsburg University's MFA program and hopes to spread her poetry into the nooks and crannies of the world. Her work has been featured in Pile Press.