I've had this little semantic in my head for awhile (guy sits down at a grave and reads to the dead person), but haven't been able to put it into words until recently. It's not my best work, but I don't think it's terrible. I hope you enjoy reading it and would love to know what you think.


He’s been here before.



His feet traverse the well-kept grounds in a precise routine, and even the most uninformed outsider could deduct that he never strays from this path. Orderly green lawns mowed into perfect symmetry crunch beneath his Chucks and spring back up, laden with fresh morning dew, as he makes his way to the site of this morning ritual.



The book tucked beneath his arm is a familiar companion, its weight a steady comfort on this difficult pilgrimage, as is the weight of the bundle of lilies clutched in his other hand. He comes this way morning after morning, sunrise after sunrise, and yet the knowledge that she rests somewhere like this never gets any easier. The unquestionable finality of it scares him, sometimes.



No one but him comes this way at such an early hour. Dawn’s rosy fingers have barely crept over the horizon and yet he still rolls out of his warm bed in which his dreams of end too soon to come here. He tells himself that it’s to pay her this final respect, this final courtesy. It’s the least he can do.



He’s the only one here, but he knows he’s not alone.



He reaches his destination in no more and no less time than usual, sits down in the same fashion that he always does. The blades of grass beneath him are dewy and irritate his skin as they penetrate his stonewashed jeans, the shade of the oak behind the familiar stone enveloping him in an unnatural cold that causes him to pull his jacket a bit closer about his shoulders.



The stalks of the lilies are wet and slippery as he places them against the base of the weatherworn stone. He would have purchased them in a vase or covering, but he knows that she wouldn’t have wanted it that way. She always said that the plastic wrapper was stupid, after all.



He wants to say something, but he can’t find the words. Sometimes they come; broken, candid, and completely unrehearsed as they stumble over his lips with unexpected ferocity. Sometimes, he talks to her just as they had talked before it had happened.



Anything to keep her real, because he isn’t real without her.



But, there are days where the words never come. Days where he doesn’t say anything because he can’t figure out what to say. Even if he does figure it out, sometimes the words never come because he can’t put his thoughts into them. Somehow, the words seem too empty to express what he’s feeling.



He loves her so much that it hurts, but he never tells her. He doesn’t know how.



He means it so much that it cuts like a knife that he doesn’t want to remove because he would miss the weight of its absence, means it so much that he can’t tell her because he can’t put it into words. Means it so much that, even if he could describe it, he doesn’t want to say it. He wants it to be private, to be one of the few things that he can share with her anymore.



He folds his legs pretzel style and opens the book, staring at the pages stained with raindrops and tears, wondering where to begin. It’s a love story, one that she had always wanted to read out loud with him but had never gotten the chance before she was cut down in her prime.



“Were we at chapter six?” he questions in a shaking voice.



It never gets easier. The hurt lessens, the pain heals, the resonance diminishes, the timbre fades, but the memories never go away. He’s read this book so many times that he feels like he can read the ink with his skin, but he reads it again. And again, and again, and again, because he knows it’s what she would have wanted.



Before he starts, he wants to tell her that he loves her, but he can’t. He doesn’t know how, but it’s okay. He knows that she knows it as much as he does, but he wants to make it real by saying it out loud.



Anything to keep her real.



He had learned a lot about love.



From her.



Through her.



Because of her.



He hopes that he she understands the gravity of what she’s done for him.



He hopes that he did the same for her.



He hopes that someday, he can find the right words.



But someday is far away, and even though he wants to give her every sunrise of his life, today is all he can promise. He hopes that today is good enough.



He turns to chapter six and begins to read in an unsteady voice that gradually gains confidence.



He reads and hopes that, wherever she is, she’s listening.