Dancing on Graves

I didn’t know her, not really—
she was an old, quiet shadow, of what I was told she once was,
a face barely known through my eyes as a young boy,
and the ground where she lay felt no different than air,
soft beneath my shoes, green and bare.

I danced on the grave next to hers,
and the hum of a tune warmed my throat,
a melody spilling out, untouched by grief,
until my mother’s hand gripped my arm,
her voice taut as wire—Stop dancing on graves.

In that snap, the first memory of my mother doing so,
I learned silence,
the quiet weight of mourning’s tone.
I didn’t understand it then,
just the shift in her voice, a low thunder,
and how she wasn’t smiling and how my laughter stilled.

But now, grown and walking slower myself,
I think of a Christian’s death, as a crossing,
like I always have, even then,
while my innocence still was true,
not an end but a door swung wide—
and I wonder if, even then, I’d sensed a joy.

For isn’t death, to those with faith,
another kind of birth?
A step into glory, a dance beyond sorrow,
where souls shed their weight and rise anew.

Perhaps I danced because I am selfish,
perhaps I dance, because somewhere deep,
I know the grave is not the end.

And now I think of her, resting, redeemed,
of my mother’s grief, and my clumsy joy,
and how grace holds both close,
for even in silence, we lift a song,
for the dance that awaits on Heaven’s shore.