The sunset is dying quietly.

She sits alone, by the gravestone, eyes staring far ahead, at some dreamed-up misty place beyond the woods. The autumn wind dries the tears on her face. The air smells of pine and lost things.

She does this every year. On this particular day. She will do whatever it takes, cross miles and continents, just to be here, just to be near her, in this forgotten cemetery, in this quaint half-forgotten town in the middle of nowhere.

She brings flowers with her. Chrysanthemums, narcissi, even wild countryside blossoms that have no name. She sometimes buys them from the local market. She sometimes picks them up on the long, lonely drives through the suburbs where the world is drained of colour.

Today she has roses. This is the third time she has brought roses. The first time, was right after the death. She remembers it, with maddening accuracy, the way one recalls the grisly details of a nightmare.

First was the numb disbelief, that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped inside a dream. Then the post-mortem results that confirmed what she had tried so long to deny. Then the eternal, persistent, worthless questioning. Why.

The mourning began as a canker that slowly, silently spread, cancerous and invisible, killing her softly.

The first time, she waited by the gravestone for an entire day, kneeling and praying, seeking answers that never came.

She’d bought a bouquet of white roses then. They got crumpled in the packaging. Their white was that of hospital linen, not snow.

She could hear the foxes in the bushes, the sparrows in their nests. Occasionally the lonely hoot of an owl would startle the silence.

 

*

Even when she leaves the cemetery, she doesn’t truly leave the place. The letters on the tombstone are burned into her memory, like stars. A drowsy heaviness follows her around, like a shadow. She hopes there is a ghost beside her, trying to communicate something but there isn’t. There really isn’t.

Few years later, she brings yellow roses in acknowledgement of a friendship that never was. She sees her face in the clouds, in the shadows flitting amongst the moss-encrusted gravestones. She hears her wild laugh and her plaintive call when the grasses sway and dead leaves rustle. She feels as though someone is calling her, right from the depths of a black hole, so dark no starlight can ever reach.

In time she has learnt to close her eyes at such moments. Then she can pretend she is walking barefoot through a medieval forest, the golden sunlight casting dappled shadows on the mossy path. Soft footsteps are following her, and she can wonder if this is a momentary glimpse of heaven. She keeps her eyes closed for as long as possible, because she has learnt that the moment she opens them, that dream disappears in a lightning flash of realization, of awakening.

When she opens her eyes the world is a darker place.

She carries the images in her heart, like relics of an unrequited love. A lone girl swinging in a red lace dress at sunset. A lone girl knocking on her window sill, with a basket laden with fruits and berries.A weak bed lamp casting dark shadows on the still body of a girl, clutching a teddy bear to her silent heart. A tiny body, wrapped up in white, like a dead angel, being lowered down into a coffin.

The last image is that of herself, lying on a mite-infested bed of a cheap hotel, staring at the plaster peeling from the wall, the sound of her grief drowning the sound of love-making next door.

 

*

Today she has roses. Red as the blood that never stops bleeding. She offers them as tokens of the love, she should have offered long ago, when the days were longer and the nights less darker.

She mumbles to herself, says the words she had left unsaid, sings of love and longing and emptiness but their story is still incomplete, hanging in the dusky air, invisible and intangible.

When she comes back next year, nothing will have changed except the flowers. They will be fresh and perfumed, like a new found love. Then they will wither like life.

In between she will mourn a lot and smile a little. In between she will take out the trash and pay her bills. In between she will meet faces, and still search for the face she will never meet. In between she will wait for disease or old age to claim her. In between if she gets too tired of waiting, she will take her own life like Mariana had taken hers.

And the roses shall still wither.

The roses shall still wither.