She absently runs her fingers through the stiff grass, feeling the smooth, cold touch between her fingers. Trying to squeeze the blades and pull them out, she curls her fingers to get more strength, but she can’t find it.
Sighing, she lets her hand rest on the bed of grass beside her thigh and leans back against the stone. She doesn’t feel the way it digs into her spine, making it an uncomfortable position. She doesn’t feel the hard ground beneath her either, which will inevitably make her butt numb.
She peers up at the sky, barely noticing the clouds blocking the sun with their dreary wall. Signing again, she returns to slowly comb through the grass, pulling at the end of the blades.
Suddenly, she sits up and readjusts her position as she lets out a mirthless, bitter laugh. “It’s odd,” she says softly, “definitely odd.”
With her back straight against the stone, she doesn’t turn around to look at it, focusing all of her visual senses on her fingers in the grass.
“I don’t understand it, but you’d probably have an explanation for it, saying something just to say something. Or,” another bitter laugh, “you’d say something alongs of ‘I don’t know, look it up.’” She takes a quick glance against the stone but doesn’t rest her eyes long enough to see anything.
“I find it odd,” she says, pausing, “yet here I am, facilitating the very feeling I find odd.” The girl sighs again, raising her head slyly to watch the people around her. No one is looking in her direction, staring at her like she’s crazy, which is odd in itself.
“People come here,” she starts explaining, like it will help in some way. “They come here to talk to people who can’t listen. Corpses in fact, encased in clothes and jewelry and wood and metal and whatever else, but...still corpses.”
A man, displaying his age in his slow movements and jostling positions where it should be smooth, is speaking. At least, she thinks he is, but all she sees is his mouth moving as he stares adamantly at the words on the stone. She wonders how those words can make him say so much now, here, where she can barely explain a simple question, say a simple thought.
“I get how some people think their relatives and friends live after death, watching over everyone, but why would those people ‒ the dead ones...the ghosts – stay where they were buried?” She’s no longer thinking about the words she’s saying, just letting her thoughts pour from her lips. Maybe that’s what the old man is doing, too. “Are we assuming they are confined to a certain diameter from their burial? Are we assuming they get these physical limitations, yet they get to exceed the very fundamental foundation of life? They get to live after death, but God forbid they move too far?”
She sighs, quickly moving her eyes from the man when she notices she’s been watching for too long. No one’s supposed to see you here, no one but who you’re here to see.
“Wouldn’t these ghosts—” she stops, thinking about the word. Is she assuming that people turn into ghosts when they die? What if they’re different things?
She shakes her head slightly, trying to clear it. “Wouldn’t those ghosts try to see their families? The ones that love them enough to see them?” The girl pauses, glancing to the stone behind her then to the man and back to scanning the yard. “Would you come to see me?” she asks softly, turning her head down.
Again, she shakes her head. “But,” she starts again, louder this time, “if we did think these people were limited to where they were buried, would the ghosts get lonely without their families? Is that something that can happen?”
She’s fabricating these very thoughts and ideas, yet she feels guilty for what they could mean. She almost wants to apologize for not being here enough, but instead, she says, “And that’s what’s odd. People come here because it gets them closer to those people that died, but only in the physical sense, and only sometimes.” Her words get softer as she goes on, dipping her head toward the ground. “People–we,” she corrects, “are limited by what we know, and we can’t know what happens after death. So we assume, and we hope, and we guess, because it makes us feel better.”
She laughs bitterly again. “I feel so stupid. I feel stupid for feeling the need to come here to talk to you because it doubts that you wouldn’t watch over me.” Her stomach twists with guilt, but she continues. “But I also feel stupid for not coming here because I want to be near you, and forgive me for saying so, but your corpse just can’t cut it, Mom.”
Despite the small laugh that escapes her, a tear slides down her face. There’s no one here to hear the joke or see her cry or make her feel better. There’s no one here but a corpse buried six feet underground, unable to resurface. There’s no one here, yet she still felt the need to come. Why? Why? Why?
Because there’s no one here, so why is she here?
The girl stands up, and without glancing at the stone, walks defiantly forward. She doesn’t turn her head as she passes the man; there’s no one there for him either.
No one here but dead bodies and people whispering unheard words.