and a eulogy in a pear tree...

the funeral was yesterday. it was yours, and like the sky, the day, like you, it was dark, imperative, and beautiful.
i come here seldom, only when sacrifice or ritual is demanded for sake of sanity; only when something dies.
a wet and rotting paper uopn which one might have once found a poem of heartbreaking simplicity and hope. a secret soul, blinking in the unexpected light. a prayer, white and unblemished despite it's underground tenure, so lifelike i can't remember now how long ago i burried it. and now, a wedding ring.
at first, i can think of nothing to say, everything i feel seeming heavy and irrelevant in your absence. but slowly, words come, a trickle at first, then a torrent, a flood. i turn away for a few moments, to keep from drowning your memory in the fluent fervor of my pain, restructuring the dam and collecting stray logs scattered in the onslaught before i feel safe facing you again. still a little embarrassed by my glistening lips and the moisture on my breath, my hand lingers over my mouth as a finish my elegy.
i pull myself from remorse and captivation in an awkward gesture, pulling back from the memories like the palm of a hand over a vaccum, the tug or mortality struggling against me at first, then a pop of freedom, sudden and complete, a swallow at the top of the hill that restores clarity to ears that had been momentarily numbed by the journey, by the weight of the air, thin and heavy like your ghost, all at once invisible and the only thing i can see.
i feel better with a few feet of dirt between us. you will be safe here, and i might now find some peace. i hope.
i mark the spot, as always, with one perfect stone, round, smooth, cool from lying in the shade. it seems so composed, everything i am not, guarding my broken treasure with it's wholeness. i remember that it may well have taken innumerable years for that stone to achieve its current state. i am only 25, and find no comfort in this. i am still too aware of my imperfections, my unpolished, unsmoothed exterior, something more likely to cut a child's foot at the beach than ot be picked up and treasured. pretty rocks decorate. ugly rocks are thrown. i wonder where or when i will ever land.

knowing it's time to walk away, i turn, and take a single step.
farewell.
until we meet again here in the dirt, when we can all be together again, and whole.