Orphan's Gift

That’s me there, the orphan, the incomplete son of a dead man, mother’s blue veins now solid as porcelain. When I was a young man of purpose I went to my father’s grave to take a photo of his aura. I expected an emanance, something I hadn’t known of his life, but I was alone, just me and three graves: his (I barely knew him), my grandfather (a difficult man), my stepfather (who never mattered). There is a stone for my father, none for the other two in that mass grave, as if they never existed. My mother designed her death in advance, “pre-planning” it’s called, but she left the details to me, so on the stone beside my father I gave back my father’s name, my name, her name before and now again for as long as the dirt stays and isn’t tossed over the edge.