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Lynn Edge

Goliad: The Unknown Alamo

At sundown, the white ticket holders enter the arched opening to Presido La Bahia. I wait in line, my ticket blood red. Finally, the wooden gate swings open again, and I enter a time when Texas struggled for independence from Mexico.

candlelight
on a straw hat brim
crescent moon

chilly night
only the campfires
are real

My group walks to the chapel adjacent to the courtyard. The double door creaks as it opens. Inside, a man’s hand grabs the hem of my skirt. It takes a moment to realize he is an re-enactor. For a week, Mexican soldiers locked the Texas Volunteers in this chapel each night. I imagine the stale air of more than three hundred men crowded into this small space, the smell of festering wounds, and the fear.

On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the men of the Texas Volunteers, some as young as sixteen, were marched outside the fort, and shot.

granite monument —
the name of my great
great grandfather’s brother