Caroline Miller

Visiting Zelda Fitzgerald’s Grave

For a couple of months I can’t make anything nice come out of my mouth
bewitched by the way I imagine you, glitz and glitter, wanting
to know we could remember you like that: still shimmering and elegant.

I scrape clumped mascara from my eyelashes. Tiny hairs stuck to fingernails,
desperate and everybody knows it, mouth slicked pink with raspberry gloss.
Some reckless buoyant need uninhibited by the plunge headfirst into soup-thick summer air.

I did chop all my hair off once, for what it’s worth. Stared at the sapphire beta fish
swimming circles in its bowl—I wanted to be remembered like that too.

I visit your grave in the Maryland-August heat. Someone had left a shot of Bacardi,
one of Scott’s books. Your daughter buried next to you—I hadn’t thought of that.
That you had a daughter. That she was buried somewhere too.