Burying the Dead

My poem 'Burying the Dead' received an Honourable Mention in the Dark Poets Prize 2026.

Image: View of Kingston-upon-Thames Cemetery by IdR

When you are burying your mother, not you personally

of course, but other mourners

in your name. And not exactly your mother, of course,

because what is a dead body

except for a dead body, barely

fragments of flesh and bone held together temporarily during

that unstoppable process of decay.

In short, when you are burying your mother, it is best

to walk, without too much fuss, right behind the coffin,

following the funeral cortège as closely as you can so that, if

all those roses placed on the coffin

were to fall to the ground,

you could surely pick them up and keep them forever as a memento

of such a terribly sad day. And

as it happened, with all the heaving and

the swaying of the coffin, one,

but one, single red rose

drops to the ground, and I run and reach out to pick it up.

And now, there is this rose in my hand, and

I cannot stop thinking that

I must never let go of it, for it will forever remind me

of my mother, her life, her illness, her

death, her burial.

And yet,

I know deep down I will somehow misplace

the rose and I will likely forget about that day

most of my days. I suppose

running after a coffin

just to get hold of one of the roses deposited kindly

on its lid makes no

sense really, no sense

at all.

©isabeldelrio2026