The Cedarville Review 2020

12 | THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW My answer is no but it wasn’t really a question. Grass and stray branches snap underfoot as we wend our way between faded old graves names carved on their surfaces— but no faces. No lives. I don’t know these people (the sound of their laughter their childhood memories dreams lost and achievements gained and all their secret regrets) beyond the flat cold metal imprinted with the years they lived and a name to accompany: Tessa Lance Billie Sargent Imogene Schirr. We stand over Eugene and Verda my father’s parents interred only fourteen years apart now covered by the dead grass and smothering dirt of many more. What is left to call them ours? Perhaps a bone or two hidden deep below still bears DNA like mine and maybe their names will