SASSAFRAS ROAD
My parents and Dana linger behind me as I kneel down beside the freshly-packed earth, the place where my love lies to rest. There is no stone yet, only freshly turned earth to mark the spot. I place my hands on the ground, the smell of fresh soil thick in the air. In front of where Jimmy lies, is his mother’s stone, and his father’s, and beside that, a tiny angel stone I didn’t notice before, for Charlotte. And behind that, and to the left, is a little girl’s stone—my own. The one that shouldn’t be there, because I didn’t die.
And then, a thought flits around in the air, and lands on my shoulder. It tells me that someday, in the distant future, when a stranger turns down a dead end road and happens upon a small country cemetery, and pauses to read the stones—they’ll never know. They would never see the stone of an old man and connect it with the four-year-old girl’s nearby. They would never know the way that time can be only an illusion, a small fragment of what really is. They would never know that I loved Jimmy with all my heart and soul. Or that Sassafras Road is simply a loop in time, a place where time bends in a circle, rounding in upon itself.