Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge
It was the same thing every year. I trek out to a cemetery no one else I know is buried in to pay my respects to someone I didn’t even know on New Year’s Day because someone I love asked me to, which was all fine and good when she was alive, but she’s dead now too. Yet here I am, kind of hungover, freezing my butt off going to pay my respects to a stranger.
The ice-covered snow crunches beneath my Uggs as I maneuver my way between headstones and plots, carefully trying not to walk over someone’s resting place. The sound is muffled as if every other sound once you cross over the property line. The cars on the street not even 100 feet away aren’t as loud as you’d think they should be. It’s like the whole cemetery is under a sound-dampening dome or something. The flock of geese flying overhead should be a racket, but yet they are entirely silent. It’s kind of eerie but also kind of beautiful. Do they know they are flying over a sacred space? Is there something internal telling them not to screech as they fly over the area, or are they just too high for me to hear?
I reach the headstone. I brush the show off the top and what has accumulated covering the name. I place a single flower in front of the stone, another part of the promise.
“Hi again, Joe.”
Comments
Post a Comment