Deep in the dying canopies, I stand alone

Watching them stack boxes on top of each other

Never knowing our names, our stories

Driven only by fifty cents.

I was once a body in a box,

Tainted with an illness, a cruel jape from the gods.

I sit alone on my marked tomb

For decades now; my appearance never changed.

Letters and numbers identify me now

I never heard my name called, like the others.

The little wooden boxes sitting atop one another,

However, unlike me, might be they have names.

And still I look out from the woods,

Hundreds of souls gaze around.

None of them looking at me,

Only at their coffins being lain.

How hard it is to die poor and alone,

Such is an indifferent burial they gave me.

But how hard it would be to live

When people come to know what ailed me.

Perhaps it was at the mercy of the gods

That I was to be buried in these woods alone,

And for now, I will rest

The way I closed my eyes thirty-two years ago.

–Sarah Montenegro

Poet’s note: SC-B1, 1985 is the first pediatric AIDS victim to die in NYC who was buried in a single grave in Hart Island.

 

Sarah is an NYC professional by day, a writer by night. She writes horror and tragic stories, and sometimes, about past lives. Recently, she tried dabbling into poetry. You can email her at sjcm1721@gmail.com  and you can check out her short stories at sorenlysander.wordpress.com.