Poetry

How We Said Goodbye

by Yanita Georgieva

Five men with footballer haircuts and off-brand tracksuits
buried my grandfather in a two-metre grave.

Before that, they dug up my father
and tucked him by his feet. I kept my glasses off,

listened to a man of god who’d memorised
his lines. Did he know about the end?

Even when your mouth and mind
defied you, you stretched your fingers out

and counted what was missing from the garden:
apples, figs, and that long yellow thing.

I think you would have liked a room with bright
green pictures of the otherworldly.

I think you would have liked to decompose and feed
the roots of something grand and worthy

like a peach tree or tomato plant, ripe
with history, plump with giving, every bite a sacrifice.

Appeared in Issue Fall '20