It was valentine’s day when we planted you in the ground
above the coffin of your sleeping lover
scattered you beneath the roots of a rosebush brought from your garden
it seemed apt.

You’d have enjoyed the joke of the nine of us, shivering
defiant with shovel and bucket, awkward in the laughter of the brittle grey afternoon
conscious that you should not have been there
but knowing it was now the only place for you to be.

Years later I return alone
wonder at the shoots and leaf buds
finally weep.