They stand in black and they will not move, and I have never seen the still ones stand so still, packed shoulder to shoulder in the wet grass with their chins down, as if by holding their bodies quiet they could hold the day quiet too. I came in over the stone markers, low, and lifted the edge of a woman's veil, and she pressed it back to her cheek with a gloved hand like I had tried to steal it.
I only wanted to see the face. I carried off the smell of cut lilies, too many lilies, the sweetness gone heavy, and under it the church-cold smell of the deep hole they had opened in the ground and were now, slowly, arguing with.
They keep talking about someone who is not moving. I checked. No breath there to lift, no warmth off the skin, no loose hair at the temple for me to tease. Nothing for me to touch that touches back. And yet all of them face that one direction, toward the box, toward the not-moving one, as though staying near it a little longer means keeping it.
I do not understand keeping. I passed through the whole crowd and could not hold a single one of them, not the trembling shoulders, not the boy tugging his collar, not the old man's low sound.
I lifted a folded paper from someone's hand, a name printed on it, a date. I set it down two rows back. They will look for it later. I have already forgotten the name, the way I forget every place the moment I leave it, which is the thing they were all so afraid of, and the only thing I know how to do.