Poetry: Stones

by Lucy Albuery


You’ll say you’ll remember,
And I’ll trust you that you'll try,
As you stand in Cathedrals,
Wearing pathetic, paper flowers.
You’ll remember a few numbers,
Maybe a few names
Or just those graves you once saw on a school trip.
But for all you do to not let us fade away You can’t bring yourself to apprehend, that We’re already gone.

Never another noise will shake us,
Yet through the silence, blares
Rows and rows of what we became:
White rectangles, tattooed
With some numbers and a name.
A name that you claim to enshrine,
And numbers you pretend to have meaning to you.
But they’re not what matters.
Because all that did has withered,
Into the cold soil we sleep.

You don't know who I was,
So how do you insist you remember
What you never knew?
I am love
I am fear
I am all that I’ve lost
And all the scars that defined me,
All I gave
and all I took.
I am hope
I am loss
All the tears that escaped.
I am what I showed the world
And all I hid from it, too.
All I am you will never know
By a name and some dates.

You don’t remember me.
You remember a stone.