In the Graveyard

I found a bench among the graves
and sat there for a while.

The afternoon was warm enough.
Sunlight moved slowly over the stones
and the river below the hill
carried on as it always had.

Birds kept singing in the trees
with the same careless energy
they bring to any day.

Nothing here seemed especially solemn.

But the names in front of me
belonged to people I once knew.

Children.
Friends.

Lives that had filled whole rooms
with voices and small arguments
about nothing that mattered.

Now the stones say everything
in fewer words than expected.

I waited, for reasons I can’t explain,
as if something might happen.

A sign.
Some acknowledgment
that the loss had been noticed.

But the clouds drifted on,
the birds kept up their work,
and the sky remained
exactly as it was before.

It occurred to me then
that grief doesn’t belong to the world.

It belongs to us.

The dead have nothing left to say.
The stones are only stones.

After a while I stood up
and brushed the dust from my hands.

There was no revelation in it.

Only the quiet understanding
that the living must carry the memory
of those who cannot.

I walked out through the gate.

Behind me the graves stayed where they were,
holding their silence,

while the evening continued
without noticing.