The Depression
When I visited your grave this year,
fifteen years after your death,
I noticed the ground had sunk,
the length of the depression
about the length of your coffin.
Your burial had entered
an advanced state of decomposition.
Your coffin had disintegrated.
Below me, only dirt surrounded your bones.
The air your body had in its former wooden home—gone.
I stood in the depression.
My footing wobbly.
My roots—decayed.
*
Miriam Manglani lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She works full-time as a Technical Training Manager. Her poems have been published in various magazines and journals, including Sparks of Calliope, Red Eft Review, One Art, Glacial Hills Review, and Paterson Literary Review. Her poetry chapbook, Ordinary Wonders, was published by Prolific Press.
