My father’s grave does not have a headstone. One might believe this is because we were too poor to purchase one or too heartbroken to consider carving such finality into granite. One might believe this is because he was not loved.

Perhaps one would think it’s because none of his children wanted to remember him.

All of these reasons might explain why he lies in an unmarked grave.

None are true.

We are not too poor.

He was not unloved.

There was sadness when he died, yes, but there was more relief in that finality.

And though it might be easier, his children do not want to forget him.

I remember. Every day, I remember. For I am one of these: my father’s children.

When I look at my soul, and see the black stains in it, I wonder if perhaps they are not stains so much as the shadows of him.

For as surely as I am alive and he is dead, his ghost would be one crafted of shadows. He would be that prickling at the back of your neck in the dark. That sensation of malevolent eyes on the knobs of your spine. He would not be the whisper of wind but the howl through barren trees.

Such is the way his memory haunts me.

I do not want to forget him, because without him, I would not be me.

I have found I like the shadows he left.

And how the shadows do distort.

How large a shadow can be cast by a man so small.

He was not small, not really– not in body. Only in mind.

And even this is a falsehood.

He was, in truth, a disturbingly brilliant man, warped and twisted by poverty and cruelty and liars who told him that because of his good looks and Christian values and dripping masculinity, he was better than others.

Better than everyone.

It was not so hard to believe, not for him.

I believed it, when I was a child.

When he was impossibly tall and strong and wise.

I especially believed it when he was kind.

When I remember my father, it is most often to remember his cruelty: his shadows.

It is easy to remember his hands.

The way they’d curl at his sides.

How they would stop just short of making a complete fist, but his knuckles would whiten as if they were clenched nonetheless.

It is easy to remember the flat of his thick palm striking my round cheek.

Not a slap.

His hands were too muscular for such a thing.

When his hand struck you, it was a punch, no matter if his fist was open or shut.

It is easy to remember this: the way his callouses scraped like little razor blades on soft skin to punctuate the strike.

But then, much harder to remember, is the gentleness of those hands.

The way he kept his fingernails perfectly manicured.

How delicately he would pluck just one cashew from the tin aside his favorite sitting chair.

When his hands signed my birthday cards, he always wrote the word Love in cursive, with a fat loop at the top of the L.

I remember well.

I remember that the only words in that loopy cursive scrawl among the many he wrote on my cards were my name, his name, and love.

It is harder to look at the dapples of sunlight breaking through the dark branches than it is to dwell in the shadows of him.

I cannot hate the man who made me climb mountains and then told me how proud he was as we stood at the summit, somehow larger than the behemoth hump of earth below our feet as we gazed into endless miles of forest—so impossibly big and small all at once. And then we’d sit, and he’d brush my sweaty hair back from my forehead and reach into his pack to produce a Snickers bar for us to share there at the top of the world.

How do I hate the man who taught me to ride a bike? Or who told the most miraculous stories as I sat on his lap. Or lifted me on his shoulder so I could peer into bird’s nests and behold blue robin eggs gleaming like opals amongst the twigs.

How could I hate the man who climbed onto the roof every Christmas Eve, so I might believe it was Santa stomping about for another year longer?

I cannot.

So, why, then, have none of his five children, who all share similar memories, bothered to do the small honor of having a stone carved for his grave?

It is not because we hate him.

Or even because we didn’t love him enough.

I remember.

And perhaps the reason I have not gotten a stone carved for my father’s grave is because I covet the memory of him.

Or maybe it’s to punish him.

Or myself.

Because logically, all that good he did could not hold a candle to the inferno of damage he dealt.

Perhaps I feel that in honoring him, I am dishonoring myself.

Perhaps I feel that a man such as him should be forgotten.

But I don’t forget.

Perhaps, I feel that it should not be me—the child he loved and hated most fiercely of all.

He told me, often, that I was the best of his children.

I have not told my siblings this. Our relationships are spun so tightly within the web of father’s dark heart, I worry they might resent me if they knew the truth.

Though, I do believe he said similar to the others.

Maybe we all carry the same secret.

He was open about the fact that one of my brothers was his favorite. He made no qualms about it.

“Pearl, if a parent tries to tell you they don’t have a favorite child, they’re lying to you,” he’d say.

I was not his favorite. He told me as much. But I was the best of them.

The purest of heart.

The most obedient.

The gentlest.

He told me.

He and I often had conversations the others were not privy to.

He was honest with me in a way he was not with my siblings. He showed me the bare face of his monstrosity. He owned it. He acknowledged his hatefulness.

He was unafraid to reveal the bald truth of himself to me because he knew I was powerless to do anything about it.

In a way, I respected him more for it.

If you’re going to be a monster, may as well be honest about it.

He told me, he was the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But this truth also set me apart from my brothers and sister.

I’d always known what they were learning.

I’d always known that the evil in him outweighed the good–that he was past the point of earning absolution.

So perhaps, I feel it should not be me, who knew his truth so deeply. Who was not conflicted the way the others seemed to be.

It should not be me.

It should be one of the others who loved him well.

I did not even go to his funeral.

If I had, I would have made sure there was a stone.

But now the time has passed, and maybe it is just my fanciful heart speaking, but there is something poetic about that lack of stone.

These are the reasons I play at in my mind.

Reasons that might explain why my siblings and uncles and aunts and cousins haven’t managed to mark his grave properly, either…

But they are lies.

The reason I have not gotten a gravestone for my father is because I remember so much about what he was to me, but I do not remember what year he was born.

I have not had a stone carved because I am too ashamed to admit it to my siblings or my mother or my husband.

I have done the math, of course.

I am capable of research, of course.

I think I have it right, but I cannot ask them.

And, I do not want to relinquish this excuse.

I am ashamed.

And I think that’s how he’d want me to feel.

My father’s grave does not have a headstone.

Perhaps I will be brave enough to carve one next year.

"I made a diorama of the planets in our solar system for my science project. I was able to use every day objects like an empty box, string, glue, tin foil, plastic bottles, flour, food coloring, salt and soot from the wood stove. I used the stones my little brother Johnny and I collected during summer vacation for the planets."

"Oh, did you go away this summer, Sam?" Mrs. Miller asked, smiling.

I looked down at my second hand sneakers and the jeans Mama had mended so many times I almost had more patches than denim. Mama always said there was nothing shameful about being poor. We were hardworking, god-fearing people and that's what mattered.

"No, ma'am. We had what Mama called a staycation. She and Papa took off a week from work and we watched movies together, and built forts in the living room, baked cookies and pies and we even went camping in the woods down the road a bit. It was great fun.

"Anyway, Johnny found the prettiest, smoothest rock down by the creek. He let me use it for the Earth in my solar system. Third rock from the Sun." Everyone laughed, knowing the show even if it first came out years before we were born.

"When we lay the stones together, we put them in size order and Johnny's rock was the fourth smallest which made it the best one for Earth."

"But Earth is the fifth largest planet," Annie Mae said. Annie Mae was the smartest girl in the class from the richest family in town. Her project was a rocket. Came from a box her Daddy bought online somewhere. It was really cool. Thinking about it, I started to feel less confident in my own project, but I had worked hard on it, so I went on.

"That's true Annie Mae, but it's also the fourth smallest. Just depends on how you look at it I guess."

"That is correct, Sam," Mrs. Miller said. "Children, please hold comments and questions until the end of the presentation."

"Yes, ma'am," Annie Mae said, apple red because no one ever reprimanded her.

"Well, I painted each of the stones based on the pictures in our textbook. I made the paint with flour, cornstarch, salt, water, soot and food coloring. I made the rings around Saturn out of homemade clay."

"Uranus also has rings,"Annie Mae said then covered her mouth with her hand and looked at Mrs. Miller. "Sorry, Mrs. Miller," she mumbled.

"That's true, Annie Mae," I continued, "but they are quite faint according to our textbook, so I cut a plastic bottle and used a very thin ring of plastic to represent the rings of Uranus. I used string and glue to hang them all in order in the box." I held up the box so everyone could see. "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune."

"Very nice, Sam. Tell Johnny that the Earth's stone was particularly perfect."

I smiled big at Mrs. Miller. "I will. Thank you, ma'am."

The young lad stormed out of his father’s house. He leaped over the wire fence, and rushed into the meadow. He rushed over to lay down beneath a jacaranda tree. The sight of the purple flowers put a smile on his face. The sound of birds chirping made his heart feel much more at ease for the time being. He tried to push out all the mean things his older brothers had called him: lapis parvus, a small stone. This upset him, and then what made his day worse was that his elder brothers were all way taller than him, stronger than him, some even told him that they would be much richer than him, too. The young lad felt something irritating underneath his butt. He quickly stood up, and picked up a smooth, but shiny little pebble. He liked the way that it shined in the sunlight. When he heard the sound of a wagon approaching, he hid the small stone in his front pocket. When he finally decided to head back home, he noticed that the house was very quiet. It was eerily silent that if he decided to drop his pebble on the floor, he would be able to hear it. The young lad went to check the kitchen, no body was there. He even checked the bedrooms, and they were also empty. He ran back out of his house, tried calling out for his brothers, but then decided to just enjoy his time of peace and freedom. Suddenly, there was a loud piercing roar that echoed all around. This frightened the young lad. He ran and hid underneath the kitchen table. Then he thought to himself: I need to go outside, and protect the jacaranda tree. So, he leaped out of the house through the open kitchen window, and ran toward the meadow. He tried to run as fast as his feet would go, and when he finally made it at his favorite spot— he made sure to look around for any signs of danger- then he spotted it: some kind of strange looking human. It towered over him, and the house. The young lad gulped. He wondered if this thing had eaten his family. He wanted to turn back around, and hide from it before it had spotted him. Alas, before he could hide, he heard the giant say: Halt. You there. I challenge you to defeat me. The kid turned around, and said: I am a poor boy. I need to head back home, and do not accept your challenge. The giant laughed, and clapped his hands, then said: You will have to fight me here, right now, lad. With no where to run, or hide~ the young lad sighed. He would just have to fight the giant with…something. At first he thought to himself: Maybe I can try to ask the birds to help me defeat the giant. All they have to do is peck out his eyes. The young lad shook his head. He did not know how to ask the birds for help. Then he remembered he did have something to use. He started to run toward the giant. At this moment, the giant had been laughing at the sight of the kid running toward him. The young lad also had something else in his pocket which he liked to use when he had wanted to hit bigger objects like a heavy beehive that had lots of honey. He pulled it out of his pocket, along with the pebble. He placed the pebble in his shooter, a device that he had made with some branches, and a piece of rope. He pulled back on his device with the pebble placed in a pocket like part, and then let go. The pebble shot through the air with the speed of a bullet. It landed right in the center of the giant’s forehead. The giant was not laughing anymore. It fell backward onto its back, and the ground shook, almost making the kid land on his butt onto the ground. But he had managed to center and steady his feet firmly on the meadow’s ground. He smiled, leaped, and kicked the back of the heels of his feet in the air. He recalled now that his father had a sword in one of the kitchen cabinets. The kid took off like he was being chased by a pack of hungry wolves. He grabbed the sword from one of the the kitchen cabinets, and ran back outside. When he was back in the meadow, he made sure to check first if the giant was still breathing. It’s heart was not beating anymore. The young lad climbed on top of the giant, and plunged the sword deep into the giant’s belly. This created a hole big enough for anyone in the giant’s belly to escape. The sunlight beamed into the hole making the hole much more visible even from the inside of the giant’s belly. The young lad’s brothers were happy to be rescued. When they finally all climbed out of there, they were shocked to see their little brother standing in the meadow looking like a newly appointed knight to King Arthur. From that day forward, the young lad’s older brothers never made fun of their little brother ever again.

#Corvus #Lapis #parvus

29/05/2025 Thorsday.

pebble in my shoe

prodding piercing

thickens my soul

in uneven places

I become numb

to the puncture

bleeding out

one red print

a telling trail

bloody stone

Ah, I get it. You’re looking for a Rocky story, huh? A humble cornerstone who weathers adversity, sticking like glue to it’s chiseled foundations?

P-Shaw, says I. Doesn’t happen. He with the most mortar will not win in the end, not anymore than the sandstone that was deemed too soft and so was chucked atop the undesirables’ cairn. That one can hold up another is illusory. After all, that wedged-in smaller chunk was part and parcel of the larger once, was it not? Back before selfishly breaking away? And is it really any stronger having gone? Nah. Is just one more gravel in the bag.

All the stones, big and small, wind up dust on the scattered ground, by-the lonely-bye. So don’t put too much weight on the little guy... he’s having a tough enough time just keeping his own chips together.

A small stone you gave me.

You drifted out of my sight.

Where did you go?

A blizzard took you away from me!

All I have left of you is this stone!

You told me someday,I would know the meaning of the stone.

You told me to plant it in the deep snow.

Now you're gone!

The snow drifts are so high,you're no where in sight.

I need to be above the terrain to see you.

That's where you said I will find you.

So i took the stone out of my pocket.

And it slipped out of my hand.

I started digging and digging for the stone.

Then the stone started gathering more snow.

I pushed with everything i had left in me.

Til I was standing on a mountain of snow.

That came from this small stone.

I looked far and wide.

But you were no where to be found!