Posted mostly for my benefit, but you can read if you like.
It is raining. Of course, it has to be raining. I am walking down a water-blackened street, one among a horde of people, their feet falling into a single rhythm like soldiers'. All the men are in identical suits and black bowler hats, all the women in 1940's-style black suits and floppy hats with veils. Ageless. All carry black umbrellas, but none use them against the downpour. I walk amid the mass, but strangely separate, clad in a white suit, a white veil.
We walk behind an old building, almost like an old general store with a false front. A narrow alley, barely wide enough for three of us to walk abreast, is gated and fenced off. God's Acre, reads the sign.
Graves on either side, next to one another, separated by mere inches of dirt. Names names names names names. On one side, the names are all Danish, all the same last name. Rigmor Mogenson, Helga Mogenson, Margaret, Mildred, Nels, Arnold. The other side, American names, all Shirleys. Homer, Vera, Floyd, Herbert, Claire, Millie, Peter, Della, Stanley. Kenneth Shirley, Eleanor Mogenson, my grandparents. Daniel Tolle, his sisters; Jolynn Shirley, her sister. And me. I walk unflinchingly beside my own already filled-in grave, not looking twice, reading the headstones that bear my siblings names. AmberAshleyMaryDanny. Further down are names I cannot decipher nor remember. The headstones are small, denoting children.
By now the procession has stopped. The rain pounds around us, rolling off shoulders, filling umbrellas. I turn and leave, the gate creaking shut behind me.
So I'm sick. Sick is not fun. On the other hand, fever dreams are very interesting.
We walk behind an old building, almost like an old general store with a false front. A narrow alley, barely wide enough for three of us to walk abreast, is gated and fenced off. God's Acre, reads the sign.
Graves on either side, next to one another, separated by mere inches of dirt. Names names names names names. On one side, the names are all Danish, all the same last name. Rigmor Mogenson, Helga Mogenson, Margaret, Mildred, Nels, Arnold. The other side, American names, all Shirleys. Homer, Vera, Floyd, Herbert, Claire, Millie, Peter, Della, Stanley. Kenneth Shirley, Eleanor Mogenson, my grandparents. Daniel Tolle, his sisters; Jolynn Shirley, her sister. And me. I walk unflinchingly beside my own already filled-in grave, not looking twice, reading the headstones that bear my siblings names. AmberAshleyMaryDanny. Further down are names I cannot decipher nor remember. The headstones are small, denoting children.
By now the procession has stopped. The rain pounds around us, rolling off shoulders, filling umbrellas. I turn and leave, the gate creaking shut behind me.
So I'm sick. Sick is not fun. On the other hand, fever dreams are very interesting.