Gettysburg

Carrie Hicks (date unknown)

Lying on our backs in grass where my ancestors fought,
the field a witness to gallons of spilled blood
 over a way of life that couldn’t be sustained.

We drank the dark German beer of your ancestors,
whose guttural tongue you never learned.
We owned our youth, and I left
secure in us.

Did your forefathers foresee the Berlin Wall; 
the concrete split?
Did mine know a Civil War was imminent; 
a divided country?
History inevitably circles back.

Yesterday I lost you,
to the smell of summer grass and yeast,
to a letter that never came,
to quantum physics and astronomy,
to a void within
I didn’t know was for sale.

At the spot of our last meeting,
I stood in a once bloody field
and looked to the stars that stole you.
I didn’t bother to wish on them.