Sixty Days
At the entrance to the cemetery, the cherry trees form an arch, blossoms clustering
pink against the baby blue of the sky, my daughter skipping through the fallen petals;
too young to remember Kayleigh, but old enough to romanticize, she likens them
to confetti as we wind our way up the gravel path between now familiar headstones.
Where Robbie lies, the daffodils have faded, but a forget-me-not has grown
from the small pot of seeds upturned by the wind. I remove the withering stems,
fill the vase with purple iris, red perennial, and light a long-wicked candle to 'our boy,
aged two months', gone twenty-six. We stop by the park as we'd planned to
on the day he died, daughter spinning, earphones in, keen to ride the roundabout,
eyes bright, hair flowing, then, too quickly, sweeping the ground, her Tinkerbell grin.
Roundabouts make me sick but the air is still. I see a woman wheel a pram, another
ease a toddler down the slide; in the distance, the skate-park, ramps clattering.
A boy on a bike, pop-eyed minion helmet, pedals the railed perimeters,
parents arm in arm, greeting one kiss of a cloud; flip-flops, glow-white tops,
toned limbs, matching tans and sunglasses. Shorts. I want to take their picture,
gloss it over, blow it up, post it in the window of Next.
The boy zooms by as my daughter jumps from the roundabout and runs
towards the swing; the toddler forced into her pushchair, cries battle, strapped.
The gate to the skate-park opens, another teenager squeals in. I look past the couple
and fix my gaze on the unstable wall which separates the park from the graveyard.
Carol Stewart is a mother and grandmother living in the Scottish Borders. Currently working on editing her first two interlinked novels, her poems have been published in a number of journals including That (Literary Review), Gravitas, Abstract Contemporary Expressions, Coffin Bell, Change Seven, Book Smuggler's Den and Atlas and Alice.