Monument

Moss grows on the old gravestone mooring itself into the moribund marble spreading like a syphilitic rash garbling the name in shades of green the velvet glove of a thief slowly stealing the identity of the dead buried below The blurred image of a willow tree all one can still see engraved in the soft stone weathered by more than a century of rain No one remains to miss them to mourn them to wistfully stare at an empty chair erased from history as if they never existed at all whoever they happened to be