i am terribly sorry for this horrifying sight you see, for the caretaker has recently joined the residents and the grass has almost no manners at all. i am also terribly sorry for this deafening silence you hear, for everyone is either lonely or sad and no one bothers to speak or sing. everything here has been reduced to dust, and just let this be at the back of your mind―everywhere you step there is someone underneath. repeat after me: This Is Not A Pun. i remember telling you about how no one ever noticed me or gave me attention but you silenced me with a withering glare and a no-one-cares-about-you lecture. it’s kind of funny each time i think about it, because i still stay by your side desperately inhaling all your methane filled words. if you’re looking for warmth and happiness then you’ve knocked the wrong door, because over here i have seen more regrets than in prisons; more tears than in hospitals; more bruises than in kindergartens. the stars in the night skies here hang limply on their hinges and there is nothing romantic in the way someone appears holding a bouquet of flowers. here is a girl with cherry blossom veins on her wrists, and there is a man with breath like the stinging October wind. everyone is a puzzle piece except that there is no picture to form, and we are all connected by intangible threads. in the most poetic way, everyone here is part of a poem, some rhyming, some free verse, except that there is no end to this poem―new additions. every month, a new spot. under the tree; next to the bench; these are the souls of people who scrape their knees in the empty forest but want to be helped up, an- OH, by the way, if you hear whispers and see movement from under the leaves, it’s not a hallucination. What? Didn’t I tell you?

Welcome to The Cemetery.