People come
Remembering loved ones
Lost and gone forever
Sleeping here
eternally
Silent in singular repose

My secret birth
unrecognized, unknown
confined to a dark and dismal room
I am a mistake
born to my mother
herself just a child

The spark of life
I barely held
It flickered for but a few tear-filled moments
This ember, it fell
I let it go
I could hold it no longer
It dropped
as heavy as my mother's heart

Buried here in this silent cemetery
in the soundless calm of night
forsaken
left with nothing save my name
spoken, just once, through choking sobs
Emily...
"Emily...it was not meant to be."

Placed in the earth
asleep in my splintered bed
My cradle
my coffin
my sad wooden box
Wrapped inside a starched white sheet
I slumber
My tiny fingers,
clutched in eternal fists,
grasping a cloth-faced doll
I am not remembered
I am unwanted
No one notices my grave
as they walk by
I am trod upon
My unmarked grave and I
as much a failure in death
as I was in life

04/02/2002

Posted on 04/02/2002
Copyright © 2025 Melina Raven Maness Diebold