Garden of stones

My grandmother's grave is a garden of stones

Planted by peacemakers

Protected by protest

The traces of red spray paint 

Feverishly scrubbed away

But never fully gone

May her memory be a blessing

We say it loud

And it is a blessing

She lives in our stories

She is kind

And curious

And stubborn

And beautiful

I wish this poem were just for her

But it's not

Because of the red of the spray paint

The red of the blood

The red of the little girl's dress in the pile

These are our stories too

With no garden of stones to hold them down to earth

And so they float away

Lost by time and death

And death and time

Until they only exist in the red soaked deep into the earth

That we scrub and scrub

But it's still there.

Stuck on that gravestone.

So we pray and work to repair the earth

And hope the blessing of all of them will be enough

And hope the red will stop spilling

And place another stone upon the grave