Again Oblivion

The enemy keeps bombing our graveyard. The wrought iron gates twist and melt like memory. History vanishes beneath our mausoleum’s gray rubble, the wedges of marble. No one knows anymore when Aunt Lydia was born, who the primogenitor married, when Baby Thomas died. Now the dazed dead rise, some only in bone and shroud, some with meat hanging, a top hat here, a bow tie there, a baby bottle, a bible, a string of pearls, a desiccated rose, a slab of coffin. Most sit on their ruined headstones trying to remember, trying to forgot. A few put gray fingers to gray necks and swear they feel a pulse. One or two run screaming, “Save yourself! Save yourself!” Not many pick through the stones, the tiles of letters, and try to reorder names: O-N-E-S-J-M-I-T-H. One has found a mirror and stares blankly at the worms in her cheek. Was this her beautiful face? She winces when she hears the planes overhead. As if she could put a name to pain.