Just the Letter H

The gravesites were unmarked

But there were so many of them.



It was as if having a name

Were a burden,

As if death were too busy

To write anyone’s name down.



I kneeled down against one of them,

But could only discern the letter H.



It still could have been unmarked;

Perhaps somebody scratched it on there.



Some vandal or one of history’s thieves

Stealing first an alphabet,

Then stealing our hearts for a moment,

Thinking we know what the rest will say.



It was a blank gravestone,

I came to settle on that after a while.



It had something to do with the angle

I had been standing at, or the light.



There’s no way I am seeing this letter

Now, I thought, when the other stones stare blankly.



Or what if it was a child

Roaming the dank dark fog of the place

To find a blank board to learn to spell;

And what better place to learn to spell?



Cold but determined, with shaking boy’s hands

He writes a messy modest H.



His word he was taught

When he went to the zoo with mother.



He didn’t like the zoo,

And asked the mother, pointing to them all:



Mama, what are those, he asked

Pointing to the cruelest animal there.



His word was too difficult to spell,

He became forlorn and cold,

Left the place behind him,

Its air torn through with calm, and the knife too.



Moving with crunching steps

Through the yard for more.



There were no more letters

To make up a decent word.



There were no more letters

To make up any measly word.



Not even U

Could be found anywhere there.



I thought I saw I

But quickly laughed that one off.



Without Y

It was just a vague, disheveled H,



Looking a little pathetic, really,

A little desperate on its pillars.