Mourning Song

Mourning Song

Ashley Archuleta

You nested in my hanging planter
two weeks after our best man pulled
the custom red trigger of his Glock 17,
like he always said he would.

At first, I mistook your gray tail feathers
for the miraculous revival
of my frost burnt wandering Jew.
Then I saw your doleful eye, an ink drop

rimmed in blue. You warbled woe
as if you had been in that chapel, too,
and wept by his casket
while his family chanted Hindu prayers

over his painted, still face.
They wreathed him in saffron and white,
sent him to become ash.
Now, your solemn dirge rises

from a nest of dead leaves.
Notes float past my dewed lashes
like dandelion seeds pitched by a wish.
They linger, slow, like the procession

of white-clothed mourners, pale ashes
down the aisle; sting like funeral incense;
and fall like the crimson petal I dropped
to his swollen stomach.

Teach me, mourning dove—
must mourning songs have words?
Teach me —my withered throat —
to thrum my grief.

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Ashley Archuleta
Poet

Ashley's poetry has appeared in The Windhover, Agape Review, Ever Eden Literary Journal, and Laurels. She lives in Texas with her husband and one-year-old daughter.

Photography by Rob Potter