Photo by Solen Feyissa on unsplash
A Year in Scales
My niece's fish,
the birthday gift given
just as the pandemic started,
died on reopening day.It was buried with ceremony
in the shade garden
behind her grandparents' house,
a hand-painted stone to cap its one year.As time gnaws through its cardboard rest,
as body and memory are mulched,
she and I will be the same in our grief,
in the learning of letting go.
