Streets empty with sunlight, birdsong,
and the sound of wheels on the road.
I stop at a store.
Five apricots and a tomato.
The saleswoman offers to wash them before she puts them in a bag for me.
On my way to the cemetery I eat the apricots first.
One by one. They look ripe but they aren't.
A dog starts barking behind a fence
“ Beware! Unknown human heading south, eating a tomato!”
The dog-network is activated, and now all bark at nothing.
The path leading to the family crypt is scattered with pine cones.
A wild rosebush curiously leans over the headstone this any-day afternoon.
I wander around the back and see it sprung from the old crypt—
perhaps from my mother’s heart.
I imagine the quiet union of caskets and roots.
Maybe violets grow down there all year around.
My parents, having an afternoon tea, talking about all the things
they forgot to tell me.
I pull out the stubborn weed growing through the cracks—
some humble openings into the otherworld.
I feel appreciated.
I feel loved.
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