Funeral Poem by Jennifer Granville

Don’t breathe
Don’t move
Hold still
Still hold
Hold it
Hold her
Hold her in
Hold her in
Laced fingers
Trembling, trying
To keep you
Keep you in
In your home
As you fell
Fell-through
Or escaped
Slip-sliding
Sliding away
Away from me
Away

Knuckles make
A makeshift vice
A baby gate
Did I brush against you
Brush the hair you never got
Got to grow
To grow into
You
What might have been
You
Or the beginnings
Of you
Of your brow
My only chance
At a caress
Caressing you
As you too
Sped past me
Sped from me
Fled from me

Into such a sad grave
A shameful watery grave
With a flush
For a funeral
No baby
No Rock-a-bye
No lullaby baby
Only weeping, baby
Only a weeping wound
And a wounded
Weeping
Bloodied banshee
Bearing bloody witness
Silent witness
Silently held stifled
Stifled by sticky palms
Bitten black and blue
Into bruised silence
Silenced
Silent

I can give you
Nothingness
Nothing
No thing
No mourners
Dressed in black
But these letters
Draped
In mourning hue
Across this page
Marching in procession
Your procession
To process your loss
All I can process
Only words
Words for you
Words of my keening cry
The cries of the never mother
Nearly mother

Nearly