The Graveyard

A poem about inheriting the unfulfilled dreams of your female ancestors

You see the rolling fields of your childhood for what it is now. 

You attend all the funerals, dig all the graves by hand. 

You bury this soft, rotting body of yours over and over again. 

The women before you dug holes, too. They whispered their hopes 

into the soil, left them planted for generations. And from the Earth 

sprouted you, Dreamer, carrying centuries of unanswered prayers 

in the pit of your stomach. Of course you’re an idealist, a 

believer. Of course you’re doomed to fail, doomed to dig. 

You were born with dirt beneath your fingernails.