“The Last One at the Grave”

I have to mourn

the woman I loved,

the child we lost,

the life we swore we’d build,

and the man who believed we would.

They all died.

Not in one moment —

but in slow-motion collapse,

quiet as a prayer no one said out loud.

And I didn’t start grieving

when they died.

I started when I finally survived them.

May 2025.

That’s when the numbness cracked,

when I realized I’d been keeping watch

over tombstones I hadn’t dared name.

She left.

The baby vanished.

Us became a silence.

And I was left

with the echoes of a man

who only knew how to love

what wouldn’t stay.

I didn’t mourn in August.

I was still begging the ghosts to answer.

But now I mourn like a man

who buried them himself.

No flowers.

No mourners.

Just me

and a grief that finally spoke back.

She watches, I know.

Not because she cares —

but because she’s terrified

I’m strong enough

to remember without resurrecting.

And I am.

Because someone had to be.

Someone had to bury what she ran from.

And someone had to carry the memory

of the daughter we never held

as more than just a metaphor.

She’s not the one watching now.

The girl I loved is gone.

But I stayed.

Long enough to grieve them all.

And that makes me

the last one at the grave —

and the only one

who ever showed up.

by Samuel Schumpert