Burying

by Sandra Fees

This time only a stiff mouse left by the neighbor’s 
cat. The silver-tailed mouse, unflinching, the tiny 

tongue exposed by a small gasp of hope in the final 
few moments when escape still seemed possible. Or 

was it fear that left the mouth parted? In the yard’s 
far corner, a cemetery is forming. Two bluejays, 

a tuft of dark feathers, a tabby, the marmalade cat and 
a stray. Now the mouse. I’ve become the gravedigger.

And the priest. The one who opens the earth to grief 
and the one who chants a body to whatever comes next. 

I erect no markers for them, or for the grudges I’ve buried
beside them. Only these shallow graves. Only what can’t 

be saved. I bury everything. And everything keeps coming.

::

Sandra Fees is the author of the poetry collection Wonderwork (BlazeVOX Books, 2024). Her poems have won awards from Iron Horse Literary Review and Sunspot Lit and been published in Bicoastal Review, Cutleaf, Nimrod and elsewhere. She resides in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Image: Hossam M. Omar

ID: Close up of dirt and grass from the ground.