Rosetta | The New Republic

Rosetta

Alphabet of night.

The grammar of grief

gets written each day

& lost—learned again

by stone, by small

sliver, hieroglyph.

Morning

stays dark too long.

The light takes

its own sweet            

time to arrive.

You gone

into the afterlife

of hollow hands,

faded photographs.

Night’s black letters

that require a song

to remember.

KEVIN YOUNG