To All Our Saviors

The coffin is your womb. You are birthed of hard wood and satin upholstery, delivered from dirt six feet below the grass of an unkempt cemetery. The midwife—someone with a shovel—bears you out into the night, and darkness is the first thing you see. Your infant eyes are christened first by the black interior of a locked box, second by the cover of near midnight. You are hidden from the world.
You are lost to the woman you might have called mother, dead to the man who may one day have been your proud father. You are orphaned, alone; the child of a funeral service held too soon. The inscription on your tombstone is all the waking world will know of you. A name, a date, a few kind words. They hardly knew you; there isn’t much to say. The epitaph is your identity, the grave below it your home. People may come to see it, and speak in sad tones about what a waste it was. They never knew you, so they don’t linger long.

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