Remember Me as Inscrutable

The air was crisp, with ice frosting around the curved edges of grave stones. I staggered far into the graveyard, losing myself in the depression state of what impacted on the life of people. I remember the sound of crumbling leaves beneath my soles as I pattered through the cemetery. I wandered aimlessly through, purposely getting lost. The funeral was a yard away; my feet were weighing me down like two bars of cement chained to my ankles.

I never stopped to give a speech of our time together; I had lost my scribbled note at a cafe, forgetting I had written my sincerities on a napkin right before the cashier doodled his number off to the right hand corner before I threw it away. But I still came to his funeral, I still watched when they lowered his casket into a hole, and I still remember forgetting to throw my flower down with him. He was buried on November 21st, 2015, Death Road Cemetery. Even the name where he was buried, blared this idea that be wasn’t coming back. 

Death Road Cemetery reminded me of those movies where the ghost finds the light and passes through the crossing dimensions, and then disappears like mist. But than again, Death Road Cemetery also sounded like he wasn’t crossing through the right path; that this was the end for him. I imagined his back turned and his body passing itself off like steam from a pot.

And his face was no longer a face, but one of my passing memories of when we were younger and he had a more juvenile look. I couldn’t forget his face even if I wanted too; I burned his body on another woman’s body into my retina’s, and like a nightmare, his death had burned a piece of itself into the core of my crown.

Interrupting the funeral to lay my last kiss on his blue lips, was a suicidal call. His mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Burner, was standing over his body guardedly as if they were security guards. Especially his father- he was in a black and white suit, one arm was crossed around his wife’s shoulder and the other was off to his side, with his thumbs tucked in his pants pocket. Shit, if I had known you were cheating I would have left sooner. Then this wouldn’t hurt as much. 

I ran a searching gaze over Mrs. Burner’s face as her skin greyed as if one was dead. She wore a long black flurry dress with the longest matching veil over her eyes I had ever seen, if anything, I was waiting for her to slip on it and come rolling down into her son’s grave. I was waiting to yell, “Don’t stop her, she’s on a roll!” but then Mr. Burner would see me and he’d have his AK-47 locked and loaded and already piercing holes in my spleen. So I stood there and watched, as boo-hooing and sniffles carried on as if it was having a conversation.

His body finally lowered and he was buried.

Everyone had left as soon as the burying was finished, but even when it was over, only one stayed to slowly watch him rot beneath it. Mr. Burner had never cried before; not when I took his BMW and crashed it, our negative pregnancy test, or his son’s broken rib, and he still didn’t cry when he locked eyes with his grave. He stood there, lost in its silvery color. The wind was picking up, my hands were getting cold just letting it dangle at my thighs. Mr. Burner must have been made out of heat or something ‘cause this old ass was just standing there. The wind was whistling in my ear like a snake hissing at its prey and it was telling me, the weather was only going to get worse.

It dawned on me that maybe Mr. Burner didn’t have a heart, that when his son was born, his heart had shattered like a punch in a mirror. 

No, he never had a heart! God had created him and Satan sprinkled his hell dust all over him, and Mr. Burner could never love. That bastard was damned for good.

The sky had greyed like Mrs. Burner’s face, Mr. Burner and I wondered our eyes aimlessly into the clouds expecting to find the news report in a bunch of roasted marshmallow shaped cotton balls. Just a hunch made me suspect it was going to be a storm; I watched a little longer as those clouds were slowly swirling together, curling in a circle, as they started looking like large grey intestines. 

Mr. Burner was beginning to notice it too, he twirled on the soles of his oiled shoes and headed back to the car. But me, I stayed, I listened as the clouds started clapping like thunder. I stood and watched her grave like Mr. Burner. There was difference between me and him before his son past, I was sleeping his son and he was his father. 

Now, there was no difference. I was exactly like him. I am cold.

When I looked down at his grave, I still didn’t cry. No tear could even escape my eyes unless I had poked myself with the hooks of a pair of glasses. I stared down, lost in the color of his grave stone. He would have liked it to be blue, but he was dead now; he couldn’t see the color all the way up there. I switched glances with the stone to stare up at the hill I stood looking at Mr. Burner earlier. 

Did I look as heartless? 

If so, I guess that was another thing in common. 

I couldn’t figure out the right words to say to him. “Do I tell you about my day, or something?” The storm growled like a grumbling, hungry cop belly. I snapped my head away from the spot to grunt and groan about how stupid I looked talking to a dead boy. I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I was flooded with endless conversations with him. Wondering was it disrespectful to tell him he looked like a drag queen with all that makeup the Mordor used? Or, that Ty Dolla Sign had better looking hair than him on his deathbed.

This first sentence had hurled out my lips effortlessly: “I won’t apologize for leaving you. You hurt me, remember? You ruined us.” I looked back down and read the graves stone. My gaze followed the curve at the end of his name. I remember how he wrote and I’d always say it was crappy handwriting. 

The air was thickening, even the wild chill was seeping through the fibers in my raincoat. It was darkening, the sky was like a canopy of emptiness and unforsaken possibilities that seemed endless. And, he was right beneath it. The storm came rolling like belligerent tides in a river, but I payed no nevermind. My brain was on the verge of melting like hot cheese. 

“You’re dead ‘cause of what you did! You lied to me-” I managed to choke, I had a terrible sense this would bite me back later, but I stopped caring as the words lob effortlessly out. I was firing like a cannon. “Now, you’re dead and I know you are the biggest phoney.” My hands towered over my head like a crane and they just rested on top as if my head was an armrest. There was so much pressure building behind the sockets of my eyes, the pounding of brain was too great to think. Bile rose from the pits of my stomach. “I’m sorry! Come back!” I let the blood flow elsewhere because my thoughts were overcrowding my temple; it was as if I was listening to my stereo on max and screaming at the top of my lungs to Green Day. My head hurt so much.

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to leave just yet. Was standing there arguing to hI’m worth it or forgetting about him better? “You know, I finished that God awful song you wanted. You made me practice every fucking day until I could get one damn line right!” He told me to play it for hI’m one day, and now that he was dead I saw no reason like arguing. Yet here I was, cussing up a storm at his decomposing body.

“You wanna hear your silly-ass song?” I sped walk back to our car, popped open the trunk, and pulled out a black leather case. Took it back to his grave and unbuckled the latches on top of the frozen grass. I sat down beside it, between his stone and my case. My rear felt like I was stuck to a block of ice; the chill gave this bizarre numbness to my tush, so getting up was one of those things I tried doing, but I was mentally glued to the ground.

I popped open the lid, and smell of sweaty socks and cigarettes buds clouded my nostrils. I inhaled then exhaled with a blow. 

I loved the smell. It smelt like you. It smelt like your first gig at Adam’s Kaffee.

I stroked the guitar’s neck firmly, the smooth wood polish left a greasy feel to my fingertips. The strings felt like a tightened strand of yarn but made of sandpaper. The base of it fitted perfectly beneath my pit and upper thigh. I adjusted it on my lap before looking down at my fingers as it etched the strands. “You wanted me to play that song Suppose, so this is what I got so far.” My fingers drummed against the strings with some rhythm. Since she died, I had stopped playing, so when I did the strings left an embedded indent straight across my fingertips. I had forgotten what the pain felt like until now; the indent on my fingers felt sore.

I kept going, rocking my head to the beat, strumming my hand and thumb up and down as I played all the strings together. I had lost myself as I let my fingers do the talking; the picking of the strings sounded like a symphony. One at a time until I played faster, it began to sound like a beautiful song all together. 

I was suppose to sing along, but for some reason, the words were attaching itself to the back of my throat. I just played , but didn’t say a single word. My eyes felt swollen and puffy like a frozen mesh ball. My swallowing harden like a choked cry. I held my breath, sucked in my tears and played on. I must have lost myself too far because I had forgotten the sound of thunder was replaying over the tune. Rain hit the ground like bullets; the colder it gotten, the harder it became to stay still. Shivering in this damned cemetery, my fingers slipped off the strings and the tune stopped. The beautiful notes slipped from my thoughts and I had forgotten the next line.

I stopped.

The guitar slipped from my tips. The guitar was out of tune. It just lied on my thigh. I lost myself for another second as her grave reminded me so much of him, the silver color of his stone recollected into just one thought; of his sweet, shiny, silver wavy hair. The color he attentively aid to the color every year. 

I had lost the tune, the beauty, and then my thoughts.

“I never learned it,” the words escaped with shakiness. “I lied, like I lied about you never getting hurt. You left me because you lost me. I should have paid more attention to you. You needed me.” I pushed the guitar off my legs, let it hit the wet ground as the strands ricochet off the pressure of my shove. It let out this awful moaning sound from its strings as if someone bashed my guitar on a stage at some rock concert. “I loved you. I really did.” I rested my chin on my balled fist, “It was a no one win situation for you. You were hurting and I couldn’t stop it.”’ 

I wasn’t sure where to start, how to explain how he died. Where the story should begin and where it was to end. I pressed my finger to my lip, arched my brow, the brow that was drenching in wetness. The rain dripped off my eyebrow and down my slimming black face. I looked like I was crying, but I wasn’t.