Gravesite

What am I supposed to feel? Like there is some connection between myself and the piece of marble at my feet? There isn’t. The engraved letters just spell a name, they do not represent the man six feet below them. There is nothing here. Nothing. No matter how much I want there to be. Somewhere underneath my feet is a decaying body. I’m tempted to dig it up, but I know that won’t change anything. The body is only a vehicle for the person inside. And yet, here I am. Standing in an empty field of dead grass, talking to a stone rectangle on a sunny day in January. What do you do all day, I ask the stone, get shat on by geese? I don’t know what else to do here. I’m not sure why I even came. Curiosity, I guess. But now I feel like I need to have some sort of experience, like I need to pray out loud or reconcile past differences or cry my eyes out. I don’t do any of those things. Instead, I take an apple out of my jacket pocket and sit down in the grass and goose shit. I eat my apple in silence, watching the leafless branches of a nearby tree sway in the wind. When I’m done with my apple I stand up, put the core on the corner of the gravestone and walk to my car.