Today
I didn\u2019t bring flowers to your grave.<\/p>

It was the first time in seven years
I walked these forsaken woodland paths,
thinking of who you\u2019d be today,
without gathering handfuls
of white asters, bluebells, winding vines
of honeysuckle, sprigs
of berry buds taught and green,
blood-red leaves
singed with November frost, kneeling
to veil a barren altar
with a sacrifice of earth and origin,
bringing death for death.\u00a0<\/p>

But today
I ran my fingers
down the stem of the goldenrod
and felt life shimmering, whispering,
life forgiven and forgiving, and my hand
caressed the petals, your face,
there\u2019s been enough death.<\/p>

I knelt, offering only my hands this time
to this tribute to life,
and heard sunlight whispering
through stone and skin, rising
from shrouded spring
to become goldenrod
dancing in the wind.<\/p>

-s. rochelle<\/em><\/h4>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today
\nI didn\u2019t bring flowers to your grave.<\/p>\n

It was the first time in seven years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[180,181,56],"class_list":["post-5778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-s-rochelle-poetry-2","tag-goldenrod","tag-grief-poetry","tag-s-rochelle-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/srochelle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/untitled-design-78-1.png?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5778"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7380,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions\/7380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srochelle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}