Empty, today of all days
when it is convenient to remember.
Letters eroded, discolored,
evidence of everyone, of no one,
stories unlike those at hospitals and airports,
where departures are balanced with arrivals.
Here,
there is only loss.
We sleuth around markers
in search of a familiar name,
past the girl of 17
who would be 81 now;
she was small
when the war ended
after claiming her neighbor,
a man of 26.
Nearby, 2 and 3 year old siblings
lost in an accident,
widows, widowers, childless parents
who survived decades in a broken world.
Your hand brushes mine,
and lingers a moment
as we navigate between stones,
our steps sinking into the fickle earth.
