The grass in wet beneath my feet, and my shoes make squelching noises as I walk to where I need to be.
I'm only now aware that I am soaking wet, or maybe I was aware, and just didn't care. It doesn't matter; not much I can do about it now.
I'm cold though, and it's as if the rain has soaked me through my skin, right to the bones. A hand comes up to my face and brushes off the wet hair sticking to my forehead, and dripping water into my eyes.
I know that the rain water is cold, and yet there are warm drops flowing down my cold skin. It makes me shiver.
No one is here, and that's good. I don't want anyone to be here. I cannot stand to look in their eyes and see what's there. I cannot.
There is an ache in my chest and I rub at it, and it's a few times before I realise it is from within, and that nothing can soothe it.
It's still raining and I'm still walking, closer and closer to there.
Thoughts run through my head, things of little meaning and consequence. Bills to pay, people to meet, things to buy.
I'm not ready to think more, just yet.
I'm here, I say to myself. Here at last.
It seems as if every bone in my body is weighed down in lead, and yet I'm hollow to my core. I cannot rid myself of the hollow feeling, and it irritates me, makes me restless.
Makes me do things like walk in pouring rain to be all alone, with little care for anything else.
Perhaps it's the right aftermath I'm looking for from this insane experience.
I'm looking now, forcing myself to read the letters on the stone, forcing myself to understand what they mean.
Forcing myself to accept it, and still failing.
Something bubbles in my chest, and it's not a pleasant feeling, but anything is more pleasant than having to do this. Time and again, and still, failing miserably.
Maybe I don't want to let go of this yet.
It's been a while, and the rain has slowed, but it is darker than when I got here.
I cannot face this, I want to say so much, but I don't know if you'll listen to me anymore.
My legs fail under me, and I fall painfully to my knees, feeling the scratch of earth through my clothes, but this feels better.
At least this pain, I know, will go away.
I stare at the words and reach out to trace them on the stone. It's smooth under my frozen fingers. It calms me to watch the repeated movements as my fingertips caress the black words.
A name.
A name that meant the world, but only to me. Only in my world.
And a name that will rest here, in this stone, forever.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Peace.
It's the living who find no peace in the death of others. You left, to be in peace, and you took mine away.
Why?
Without you, peace is but a lost dream, something you cannot remember when you wake, but long for it, not knowing what it is.
I cannot see you this way, I will not see you this way.
And yet here I am.
In the damned rain you loved so much.
