The Devil’s Crown

In this eerie essay, the poet laureate of Kansas visits a cemetery where legend has it the devil ascends a staircase to visit the grave of his son. She goes not once but three times, drawn, in seems, by the space it allows for pondering grief’s sharpest edges:

I trace the letters of a name and age lost to history. I think I’m trying to offer whoever is beneath it the tenderness of becoming a memory. Though I don’t go to visit my mother’s grave, I like to think of the devil here, on a sunny hillside in a small town in Kansas visiting his son. The picture of his grief seems so much calmer than mine, more like the scenes I’d seen in movies of the quiet sadness of a death accepted. Something dignified with a tie, his garnet skin shaded under a dark umbrella. I don’t remember if my son was at my mother’s graveside when they lowered her in, but I remember my ex-husband holding him in the lobby while he screamed all through the funeral. I knew he needed me, or at least would calm if I touched him, as he always did, but I let him be hurt and afraid so I could stare at my mother. But I think this may be parenthood—to give our best love to the ones we hurt most.