Questions for Dead People

July 2024 | poetry

when moonlight bathes the cold marble of your headstone,

do you cling to the echoes of old laughter?

what burdens sleep in the final exhale?

you, where the tiger lilies won’t bloom

and songbirds fill spaces we cannot see you go

can you tell me if a holy hand found yours adrift

in the currents of a starlit eternity?

or is your faith another fiction?

are my questions dandelion wishes,

seeds fallen where i find you

at the edge of all my doubts,

prayers i’ll never know you hear;

can you feel the ghost of my belief

memories of silence and empty spaces we cannot fathom?

do you know

when i find the flowers dead,

i think of you

Caitie Young

Caitie L. Young (they/them) is a poet and writer from Kent, Ohio, where they earned their MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University (NEOMFA). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, new words {press}, The Atlanta Review, The Sonora Review, The Minnesota Review, and elsewhere. They were the first-place recipient of the 2022 Foothill Editors Prize for best graduate student poetry and are a pushcart nominee.