A Shard of Bone

It is early morning and he walks alone. The iron gates, crusted with rust, clang in his wake. Fog washes over the tombstones in waves. His feet crunch upon the ground. The fog obscures his vision, but he could walk here blindfolded. This journey to the cemetery has become a routine, anticipated but not enjoyed. The call of a loon sails through the milky air; the sound ripples along his spine. He walks onward, head forced down, eyes riveted to the ground.

When he finds himself before the tombstone, something is different. A fresh spray of roses has been laid upon the grave. Kneeling down, he runs a finger along one rose, the blossom still curling with life. Pale petals drenched in dew, leaves like wax, thorns jagged and defiant. His eyes search the grave for a trace of this new intruder. He is curious but miffed; he had believed himself to be the only visitor here. He felt a sense of belonging with the grave, as though his own name should be scrawled beneath that of the deceased. He wishes that he had felt closer with the fleshless creature now sheltered within the grave. They had been friends and almost lovers, nearly united as one, all the fragments fitting together--but then the passing of time tore them in half. Where life has failed them, death is infinitely more skilled; it brings them unbearably close.

He brushes a hand across the tombstone, his fingertips tingling upon the engraved lettering. The name. The epitaph, banal and meaningless. The dates of birth and death--dates too close together for comfort, dates that stir murmurs in passersby. How tragic. Poor kid, to die so young. Those who had cared to know him never said so, only the strangers.

Dawn light pours through the sky’s gray latticework. The sun awakens beneath the horizon, the fog begins to dissipate. He sighs. He stares at the tombstone as he always does, daring it, begging it to change. But it never will. It will always be an impenetrable fortress. It will always be the color of bone. It will always pronounce in bold letters that its resident is “beloved.” It is far from the truth for everyone but him, and now this anonymous visitor that leaves flowers. Perhaps it is done out of guilt, he muses, atonement for an imagined sin.

He stopped leaving flowers long ago. Once, he was almost a virtuoso in botany: weekly journeys to the florist had taught him much, as well as nearly driven him bankrupt. Roses, lilies, carnations--he selected all the most respected arrangements. But the bouquets only taunted him with fleet beauty that withered by his next visit. Dead flowers upon the grave like a forgotten promise--what was the point? It was nothing more than a cruel recapitulation. So he surrendered easily, like the flowers forfeiting at the first breath of death.

As the fog around him fades into the distance, memory washes over him. Memory of that last night. The images shoot through his mind, brief and bright like lightning. He pictures it all too well, but only for a moment…

In the air, gusts of smoke, flashes of red and blue light. On the pavement, an array of blood and glass. The static of a radio. A siren’s wail come too late. He arrives in a daze; each movement slow and meaningful, as in a dream. The paramedics, somber and uniformed like soldiers, march to the hunk of charred metal, extract the broken body from within. A devil on a mission, now felled. There are no tears, no shallow sobs. Only numbness in the late-night air as the ambulance departs. The siren falls silent…

He squeezes his eye shut. A knife quivers in his throat. He can’t cry anymore, he doesn’t want to. Turning away from the grave in despair, he exhales sharply. It hurts too much… His fingers flex. As he opens his eyes once more, he glances behind him.

Out of the retreating fog comes the figure of a woman, thin and stooped. She is garbed entirely in gray, almost blending in with the fog. He watches as she shuffles to a low tombstone near him. She does not seem to notice him. With aching slowness she kneels, her bony knees puncturing the earth. The painful curve of her back sharpens as she touches her lips to the tombstone’s roughhewn marble. He hears the scratchy sound of her whispers.

Sweat beads on his brow--or is it just the remains of the fog? Paranoia pounces on him, setting his teeth on edge and quickening his heartbeat. In the cemetery he is at his most vulnerable; the presence of another heightens that exposure. He stands quickly, wanting nothing more than to leave now. He tiptoes away from the old woman kneeling penitent at the tombstone.

“I’ve seen you before,” says a brittle voice, rusting from disuse.

His breath catches in his throat. He freezes as the old woman rotates her body to look at him.

Her gaunt frame seems to drown within the gray overcoat pooling around her. A thick film covers her eyes like cobwebs, yet the pupils search him relentlessly. He squirms beneath her gaze.

“I’ve seen you around here,” she says again.

“I… Y-Yes,” he stammers.

She continues to study him, her chapped lips pressed into a line. He shifts his weight, stuffs his trembling hands into his pockets. The rising light swells upon the tombstones, giving them a dull rosy hue.

“You come here too much, boy,” she says at last. Her voice is weak but there is still steel in it. “It’s the duty of the old to keep vigil at the cemetery. But you… You’re too young to be here more than an old widow like me.”

He swallows hard. “I’m sorry, I don’t--”

“You don’t have to know everything, boy. Just let it alone for a while. Whoever you’re always visiting will still be here next week, next month, next year…” She pauses. Her dry blue eyes slide in and out of focus. “You come here too much, you start to become like them.”

The loon wails again, the fluty sound now sharper and closer. Goosebumps burst along his skin like rivets. He tastes the moisture in the air upon his parched tongue. He stares at the old woman like he would stare at a car accident, unnerved and fascinated.

She bends a single tapering finger at him, beckoning him closer. He does so hesitantly.

“The dead are still dead,” she whispers. Her breath rattles. “You don’t need to remind yourself of it so often.”

Her lips curl into a half-smile, revealing a row of rotting teeth. She reaches out a hand to him, knobbed and veined, the skin stretched thin like paper. He falters. He is afraid to touch her, afraid to become like her. She merely nods--she understands.

He retreats from the old woman backwards, eyes still fixed upon her. She raises a hand in farewell. The grass gives way to stable pavement. As if putting up one last fight against the dawn, the fog strengthens again, enveloping the woman’s hunched silhouette. A gray woman bleeding into the gray air, as though she were never there.

At last finding the gates once more, he clings to their bars, breathing deeply. Inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale, a rhythm to keep him alive. The widow’s voice filters into his mind like a flickering light. She understands, someone outside of his dreams actually understands what he feels… It thrills him but frightens him. She sees that he is as close to death as she--they both understand it far more than they should. In her own way she begs him to escape the cemetery’s comforts, before it is too late. Before he becomes a corpse animated only by memory. He needs to understand the pain before it destroys him, and because of her, he can try.

This boy, dead at nineteen, that he both loves and despises... he is a shard of bone embedded in his eye. The pain is nearly unbearable, and it is permanent. But it is his pain. That shard of bone is his bone. It is a part of him, and it always will be. It cannot be extracted, and he must learn to accept it for what it is. Eventually it will lessen to a dull throb and shrink to a sliver, but it will never end. He will always feel it, remember it.

Tears fall from his already moist cheeks. They will be the last tears. He stumbles from the cemetery in a daze, as though walking through the gates is like emerging from the womb: a blind, raw being thrust into a strange new world. Now he stands like a soldier on the front line--faintly trembling, unsure of what lies ahead, but prepared to face it.

(edited for typos and lilymoore's suggestions)