It’s quiet here, but screams echo in my ears.

The gardens are well tended. I wonder about the fertilizer.

How many of my hopes and dreams will end here, sprouting grass?

There are worse places to be. There is no tension, no anger, no pain or anguish. Anything that could have happened has happened already.

I regard the monuments, the inscriptions, the dates, the flowers and gifts left by mourners. What might have sat on the desk or been kept in a pocket by the departed now sits by a tomb stone, murmuring their last vibrations.

An old woman sits on a bench. I sit down next to her. We breathe together, regarding our future with our loved ones, regretting that we can’t be there now.

She takes my hand as I begin to weep. I want to stay here but I can’t, not yet.

When I have called, she lets go of my hand and walks away silently. I’m engulfed by emptiness.

I summon my strength to rise and leave, rejoining the city of the living. I regard the faces of the man selling newspapers, the girl skipping rope, the woman pushing a stroller. They all know what I know. It’s written on them.

All they want is what’s in the City of the Dead. Death, peace, reunion, an end to striving, to compromise and discord.

There is nothing for us left in life that can take away the pain. We have to walk on, to face the divisions and exhaustion. We envy the dead.