Begging at a Graveyard
The fence is an open mouth made of cracked ashy lips, yet she enters. She doesn’t want to, but her feet keep touching new gravel and rusted grass as she holds herself steady, preparing for everything. The apple of her throat bobs just as the graveyard swallows her whole, snuffing out the light from the town road.
The flowers, wrapped in delicate paper, start to rot away. Such a contrast to her fingers gripping them, shaking as if movement is the only way to stay alive. And maybe it is. They’re both on the edge. Flowers that were bought yesterday and a body that couldn’t hold anything down.
Except the green stems look more natural than the grass. The flowers are pink and yellow. Such lively colors.
She follows the tidy lines of a path, both very aware of what she needs to do and completely lost on how to follow through. The small stones shift as she hikes to the lot behind the oak tree. There are no marks separating it from the other lots but she can recognize the names. She knows the date of birth with an expecting dash on one close to the front. She almost believed there would be a proclamation. Something about the area should yell ‘family,’ right?
It’s only half filled. There’s a difference to grass that grows above a dead body. It’s greener.
She sinks her knees onto the grave of the second headstone and presents pink and clear wrapping paper across the bottom ledge, whispering, “Hello, Erin.”
This is the first time she’s visited this grave.
It took longer than it should have to work up the courage.
“You don’t know me,” she says, one hand tracing the death date. One day before she was born. “But I often wonder if we’d get along. It’s kind of a forced comparison, me and you.”
The remains of the flowers shake under wind gusts, pushing her closer to the headstone, to the name.
Erin Brooke.
Her name.
“Because my name is Aaron Brooke Baker. I was named after you.”
The wind picks up harder, pulling her words out quicker.
“And I was wondering if it would be okay….” A twig from one of the trees above stumbles soundlessly into the grass. “To change it.”
The paper creases, crackling like live fire even though everything around her goes dark. The cloudy sky disappears as the wind pulls everything closer to the grave.
A curling. All centered around her.
She chokes but keeps going.
“I want to be Erin Brooke Baker.”
She places a hand on the name. The spelling, shorter and for some illogical reason, feminine. She craves it.
The grave hums up at her. A gentle rolling and buzz like the first early summer evening of fireflies.
She keeps her hand there and tries to find an answer as a stillness settles. It takes a long time, but time behaves differently lying next to a grave. Everything feels short enough to be disrespectful and long enough to feel stuck in the past.
There’s nothing quite like your name belonging to a dead person. There’s something unique about bringing a name back to life.
She traces the letters one last time like a child practicing with shaky hands in their schoolbook. The first time Erin writes her name and on that final line down of the ’n’ she feels her hand finally relax.
Erin didn’t get the lightning from heaven sign she wanted, but she stands and offers her gratitude.
The grave lets her go with a gentle breath.
