by Robert Markland Smith.
You walk down a country road, on a windy fall day; the leaves are circling around you, blown about by the augur of winter. You approach the gate of the abandoned garden where the corpses lie. Your hair is blowing in the wind, whipped around by every gust. You stick your hands deep into your coat pockets, just to keep your fingers warm. The fence surrounding the cemetery is dilapidated and dangling from loose nails. Some of the pickets lean on others, and there is a spirit of desolation all around you.
You enter the garden, walking through piles of dead leaves, which are brown and crackling under your feet. You make out the grey and brown scenery, despite the decay and disrepair of the tombstones lined up in death rows. Some of the crosses are no longer standing. And there are not only crosses here: there are monuments for people of other faiths. Winds of change blow in your cold face, announcing another season.
There are inscriptions on the tombstones, bearing the names of the dead buried under the frosty ground. Look, here is Dan Slote, who died a few years ago: you knew him in the eighties. He tried to help you along with your writing. And as you recognize his name, which is partly erased by time, you get a cramp in your chest. The tombstones here are not elaborate; they are wooden tombstones, undescript, and plain. You would think there would be a monument here.
And here is another name you recognize, Julia Shreck, who came to an untimely end when she was in her mid-thirties. You knew her. She had such an unhappy life, and the only time you remember seeing her look joyful was when she was pregnant for Joshua Zoltan, her only son. You look up at the horizon, beyond the cemetery fence, and the setting sun is struggling to peek out through the grey, dishevelled clouds.
You walk along the rows, searching for other names you recognize. The upkeep of this holy place has been neglected. Look, here is Peter Brawley, with dates. You knew him as well; he died of a heart attack at age sixty-one. The inscription on his monument has also been partly erased over the past few years since he went into the beyond.
There are family members, whom you treasured: your mother, and your cousins Paul and Marjorie. Many of the tombstones have fallen.
You stuff your frostbitten hands deeper into your pockets. The wind howls from a distance. There is one lone dead tree just outside the garden. And you can hear the lonely wind rustling through the remaining leaves and the creaking of the branches, like the masts of a sailboat carrying the dead to another shore.
Really, it is too cold, and you walk back out of this morbid garden. You shuffle along the country road, back to the village, where the living are staying warm.
You can remember the dead, you can even talk to them, but the only response is the wind rushing past you, into the emptiness.