This Thing · Palm Grave

The woods are where most people choose to get buried, amidst the live oaks and where the invasive trees have been cut down, left to be nurse logs. The ground there in mid-summer, through the lens of one phone with bad reception and into the screen of another phone with fine service but inconvenient geographical location, is medium brown. Deeper brown is visible through the dried and decomposing layer of tree sheddings and slightly damp forest dust.

Breaking up the median color, “forest-floor” as created by our brain’s interpretation of light entering our eyes, are rectangular patches of a partially saturated, eighty percent black with dirtish undertones maybe more purple and orange then red. These plots are heaping—bodies of loved ones decomposing deep below the topsoil, pine needles blanketing the surface, and somewhere nearby a two inch wide brass circle with a name pressed deeply into its metal.

Radiating stripes tease new tributaries from my directional vision—looking over, there is a grave with fanning white palm fronds holding close the body and the earth with their regular rotating pattern.