We weave through tombstones,
the spring grass soft beneath our feet.
Thick roar of wind charges the valley.
Our paths braid up the hill
as we feel into where we will bury
the ashes and bone matter
of the boy who no longer breathes.
We all quickly agree on a place.
“It’s beautiful,” I say,
and fall into tears,
broken by the reason we’re here
in this stunning graveyard
rung with aspen and waterfalls,
red cliffs and spruce.
I lie on my back where he will be,
my husband beside me,
our daughter nearby,
above us all blue sky and sun.
The earth is cold and hard,
and the spot feels right to my body,
this body that carried him,
this body still learning
how not to hold.
We cry until we don’t.
Until whatever is unbreakable inside us
rises through the brokenness.
We dust the earth off our clothes
and walk arm in arm out the gate
where our lives go on, devastated and whole,
where the boy is missing,
where the boy is as present
as the wind.