Lollie Laughs

It was agreed upon.
I knew we were to meet; her photograph presented, yellowed with age and youth,
On the bus I held his hand, the one with the serrated scar.  I trace it's zagging map with the pad of my finger,
Comforting.  A trauma story told in each depression and jagged rivet,  x-rayed against the light touch of my swirling print.

Chattering's of a thousand women saturate the top deck, embroiling it in the years of gossip and floral scented regret. Today, the bones of women talk about nothing, talk about everything.

We do not talk, we sit, hold hands, I trace his trauma.

Stop please!

The gates are wrought with iron, imbued with hands that have pushed and pulled for one and a half centuries. Our steps mocked with each pebbled cry, and swift stride.  His mission pure.  He knows she is here. She knows too.  I can hear her, she's laughing. I think we would have played together once.

Trudging slender lanes of pebble, dust and marble.  Cracked tombs like gaping open jaws.  I ignore them, he hears her.  He knows her playground is here.

Grandmother May's etched name embraces her in stone, warming it. Twin yellow tall stemmed flowers sit at it's margin, one knocked over in slain solitude.

Instinct affects me like an electron; a leap and it's fixed.

A need to leave something overwhelms me.  I do not.  Standing, we share and it's done.  I walk with him, holding his trauma in hand, I squeeze it a little harder.  Lollie laughs.