A Sonnet

Faltering
-Amanda Elend

I think now of that graveyard beyond
the tiny church crowned with half of a cross.
In the car on the way we talked about loss.
I brought up your father, you didn’t respond.
We parked in the gravel, beside a pond
coated in layers of scum and moss.
You coughed, pointing to the filthy exhaust
seeping into the air around my car. Blond

leaves fell around us as we entered that feast
of dead names, expired stories, numbers
with no shape. We both preferred the older stones,
hidden by time, ignored the newly deceased.
You looked like your father as you lumbered
across couples forever linked through their bones.