What I Came to Say at Two in the Morning

I pulled in without deciding to.

Two in the morning, gravel wet,

the headlights cutting through

the dark between the stones. I let

the engine run. His row is third

from the fence, east side.

I've been here in daylight, heard

the groundskeeper's mower, wide

awake and purposeful. This

was neither. I got out.

The grass was cold. The bliss

of no one watching—no doubt,

no performance of the grief,

just me and a solar light

on someone else's stone, brief

orange ring on wet. The night

had moths in it, working the glow

like they'd been promised something.

I stood at his name. You know

what I came to say. Everything

I should have said in 2019

before the hospital, before

the end of what his face had been.

I said it to the stone. The floor

of it came up through my shoes—

the cold, the specific cold

of ground at two a.m. No news.

I'm sorry. That's all I hold.