Sister and I we had a laughing fit casket shopping

stiff undertaker pushing flashy plush coffins but zero

laughs at your service all those shocked faces filling pews

and shame how you never got to hear the choir unleash big

hymns especially the one you asked for and oh you’d have been

chuffed about that but later annoyed that in the receiving line

Sister and I stood too long in black maternity dresses and everyone

asked what would happen to Dad so worried about Dad as if

we shouldn’t just focus for one goddamn second on you and what

came next for you and the interment was quiet and tidy at Riverside

Cemetery which has no river by its side but instead a creek not to

far named Wascana for a pile of bones of bison not humans of course

and Riverside won’t let me plant living things near your bones

not the western red lily not wild rose not prairie sage not the

brittle prickly pear cactus with its translucent blooms so in the black

plastic vase stuck on your granite stone I leave you Safeway roses

gerbera daisies stargazer lilies leatherleaf ferns plus baby’s breath

mostly for the name and how I was once your baby and I know the

wild hares might come for the baby’s breath and the roses and I like

how the hares inhabit the cemetery and the cemetery won’t ever tame them.

Riverside

Pseudoarchaeology