I sit in the moonlit prairie cemetery
and listen to the courtship
of insects. Every creature must pay
for love with a song or a dance
or the entirety of themselves.

I have paid in years for his body
to be next to mine each night in bed.
Even as he sleeps he still waits for me
and the comfort of our togetherness.
Even as he sleeps, I still long for him.

But tonight I feel closer to the almost
forgotten dead at my feet
than the humming life around me.
For a moment I think I hear him
call out to me from the house.

The racket of crickets and field mice,
chirping tree frogs and bats hunting the dark
all pause like a half rest in a nocturne,
and fireflies glow like tiny furnaces
illuminating prairie grass and headstones.

Dana Knott’s writing has recently appeared in The…