Photo by Kenrick Mills on UnsplashHere, thankfully, there is no one to offer condolences. The evening comes on quietly—what darkness does to the wailing of crows. As I drift off, the tall grasses around your grave sway away from and toward me as if you’re returning to silence what is left of the world I still live in until my grief becomes loud enough to awaken the dead.
***
When I reach for you in sleep, my fingers stir ripples into a pool of gray moonlight resting just below your name. I slip into its cool water and surface beneath a sky full of darkness and stars. As I pull myself ashore, I find the shivering wreckage of a cloud.
Walk through me, it says, before the sun rises and lifts me into the air as mist. Your footprints will mark the way for both the living and the dead.
***
Still groggy and alone, I wake to find a round stone cupped in my palm the way you asked me to cup your remaining breast after your surgery. When I lift the stone to my lips, I swear I hear it trying to whisper flinty words to me and throw it deep into the grasses stooped now with morning dew. I recognize the language it was speaking. It is the language of dirt that I refuse to learn, just as you once told me ghosts refuse to touch the ground even though they are bound to walk the earth forever.
