Rachel Pittman
Cemetery Haibun
My grandmother brings artificial flowers to her dead husband every Sunday. Even when it’s raining. It has been six months, and I don’t know if she will still visit when June turns the air to hot soup, when the grass yellows under the sun and crunches under her feet like bird-bones. This is her new religion, a kind of worship, a kind of repentance. Grief is the thing that swallows her even as she chews it. Muscle memory dragging her body back to this grave like driftwood caught on faithful tides. His funeral never ended, but she has run out of black dresses. The funeral starts in five minutes, but no one else is here. The funeral is a game of hide-and-seek, and he has been winning for years, since his language was buried in the endless night of stroke-bitten brain. The rest of us stopped playing, when words turned to misshapen keys, tossed in the empty garden, gathering rust. My grandmother is still seeking. She listens for his voice in the house, like a prayer returned to sender. On her birthday I bring her flowers, real living ones, and she is afraid to touch them.
Beautiful, she says,
and means delicate. Roses
are his favorite.
Beautiful, she says,
and means delicate. Roses
are his favorite.