With Painted Words

When Childhood Ends

by Bobbi Sinha-Morey

Map half soaked by

the rain is found by

someone's grave,

brown from dead roses

and weathered by wind.

A woman with fingers

worn as old linen studies

its creases in the dim

yellow light. She traces

the lines that lead south

where the road ends and

the woods begin. Below

the cloudy winter sky

she is like a stem long

hardened till she finds

a smaller grave where

a child is buried so far

away. She brushes her

lips with the short-lived

beauty of baby's breath,

murmuring a prayer for

the little girl whose flowers

never reached heaven.