No space here for Dave, just her and someday Dad

wedged in this double bed of grave,

waterproofed, judiciously unporous,

in their adjacent regulation crypts,

not exactly holding hands or sending her cells 

up to fertilize the apple tree that isn't here.

American ash stays ash and dust is dust.

But like the gilding of babyshoes

or the tussle for the bouquet,

it's the hygienic gesture that soothes like chocolate,

the slightly startling resemblance to intimate bedtime,

still beneath closed lids. The occasional

visitors treading on her bedroom ceiling 

in their New Balances, bearing mums and Evian,

stand solemn before her stone for entire moments,  

until they die too, the marble sugars, 

and the neglected granite groans from overexposure;

but even now all these tabulas are nearly rasa 

of the crease and stink of human commerce:

love, alcohol, smarts with machines,

a taste for licorice or verbal abuse,

the curtained homosexuality or faith in God, 

the tendency to give overlong directions 

back to the main road out.

She lies in the terra firma of born and died,

sans crossword puzzles, disdain for Delaware,

an ear for the distinction between who and whom,

the five thousand school lunches made, altar linens ironed,

or whatever pain or surprise the wedding night compelled.

There are no apples. There is no tree.

As I say to Dad when he complains

that no one wants to listen to him grieve,

you can't go into a candy store and ask for meat,

you can't get blood from a stone. 

This poem originally appeared in Meridian.