Just Let Me Say

I sat down on the warm grass, the sun beating down and birds chirping loudly in the trees nearby. I hadn’t been back since the burial. I guess I was waiting for the right time and it was never the right time, even now. How do you tell when you should visit missed loved ones? Maybe you do it all the time, out in the world. You see something that reminds you of that thing they used to do and it’s a warm, comfortingly uncomfortable feeling; sorta like sitting here in the sun. I suppose I mean how do you tell when you should visit the grave of someone you loved? It took me over a year. Seasons changed on the little stone plaque. It snowed and the wind blew and smoke enveloped it and the grass grew. Maybe there isn’t an answer.

“Hi,” I whispered to the cold slab. I’d never done any of this before. What do you say? Hope they got you a good cloud? I’m not that religious. I miss you? I think she knows. Besides, I wouldn’t want people to be sad when they talked or thought about me. You would have loved this thing that happened the other day? That sounds a little more my speed. “I know this is a long time coming, but you would have loved who we got to speak at your funeral. He used to be the Archbishop of the Anglican Church,” I told her, smiling. I didn’t say all the reasons I was happy he spoke, but they were mine; she would have loved to know he was a big wig. I loved that he was a great guy, that he agreed to do it, that he was one of the least religious people I knew ingrained in a church. Chuckling, I added, “I’d like to see your sister or even niece top that.” If I was wrong and she was hearing things we said about her, she would already know about that stuff, but I wanted to tell her in person.

For a while, I just sat there pulling at the grass. “Haven’t been writing much lately,” I began, pushing down my hatred of one-sided conversations, “But I have a system. You know how I like systems and organizing that stuff.” I thought about the million times I’d talked to her about a new way I’d come up with to get myself writing; I’d given myself a word count goal or a prompt challenge to help me focus. All the different storylines I’d yammered on about. That one character I loved to death but was gonna kill off. The little pieces of me I’d left scattered like a breadcrumb trail throughout my stories.

“I keep finding myself getting stymied by politics and equality and stuff,” I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t have understood any of that. It was just an extra level of nuance I couldn’t shake no matter how much it stopped me from getting words on the page. Sniffing, I brushed a tear from my eye and chuckled, “I don’t know why I get so attached to these things and so emotional about them. I just, I don’t know. I don’t know why I don’t just say these things so they can be out there in the world.” I looked around to make sure no one was nearby; it was pretty private out here and no one else seemed to be visiting today, at least not nearby.

Taking a deep breath and returning to breaking up grass bits, I murmured, “I don’t know why I never told you this before. I kept wanting to and it kinda ate at me that I never told you. Which is ridiculous because you didn’t know there was something I wasn’t saying.” Feeling a pang of discomfort, I groaned and sniffed. “I know a lot of people wait until they have a partner to do this talk and stuff, but I guess it’s a little more complicated than that and I did want you to know, even if I didn’t have a partner,” I continued, fighting back more tears. I was at a cemetery; I was allowed to cry, even if was for a stupid ass reason. “So, uh, I am gay or queer or whatever. Specifically, I’m pan-romantic, an offshoot of bi-romantic. Basically, I am interested in men and women and everyone in between,” I over-explained in a tongue-tied word dump. Nodding at myself, I continued, “The other side of that is that I’m ace or asexual so I don’t like people in, like, ‘that way’.” I made air quotes at the slab of stone. “Like, I guess I have what most people would consider platonic relationships with people, but I still like the hugging and kissing parts, just not the other parts,” I chuckled, trying to think how I might have tried to explain this to her in person.

“Anyway, on top of that, I’m non-binary, which I know you wouldn’t have possibly understood,” I added, touching the short curls of my hair. I cleared my throat and continued, “You know, that part was new. You would have just gotten the first part, probably. But I wasn’t even out to anyone else and I just, it was never the right time, you know? And I guess I just, it was like there wasn’t a reason, and still isn’t, for anyone else to know. Like, I was always searching for a reason.” Nodding, I looked up at the sky for a minute. “I’m Kai, now. It took me a long time to realize I wasn’t a man or woman. Like, way longer than it should have. Well, all of it did, really. But if I’d grown up in the world now, someone would have been there to tell me these things and it would have made so much more sense,” I mused. I thought about all that a lot. On a roll, I continued, “It wouldn’t have been this huge journey from lesbian to feeling like there was something wrong that I didn’t care about the stuff everyone else did, and then realizing I like kinda anyone as long as I like their soul or whatever and could see living with people of all genders, and then realizing I wasn’t broken and that you can just be romantic, and then that I should have realized I’m non-binary a lot sooner. It was quite the journey, Gramma.” Staring off into the trees, I was quiet.

I cleared my throat again and came back around to writing, “That’s where my writing keeps getting stuck in the mud. I want to put that rainbow spin on things and a lot of the time you just gotta let it be. And then I just get stuck.” That was it, that explained it all; I kept getting stuck. Sighing, I added, “And that’s where I realized all this stuff and really came into who I was; writing. I write until I figure shit out and I guess it just permeates the whole thing, little bits of me.” Biting my lip, I looked down and sighed at the plaque.

“Thanks for letting me say that to you. I really needed to get that off my chest,” I murmured as I stood up and brushed the grass from my jeans. Turning, I chuckled, “I do miss you. Love you, Gramma.”

Blue Grave Flower

            “Josh liked to foreshadow, and then claim he had the power of prediction. I remember the day he got his ability assignment, he kept it hidden so well,” I relived, thinking about that happier time. Sniffling, I continued to a few chuckles, “He could manipulate water the best, but he was also apt at growing plants, which he hated. When I talked to his professors to write this, they spoke of his unwillingness to have a ‘girly’ ability. Even as they tutored him, he did those little tricks we all know him for.” It wasn’t like that was anywhere near the most important trait of Josh’s, his deception, but everyone was going to remember him for it anyway.

            Smiling sadly, I made a tiny blue flower grow from a pile of cemetery dirt I’d picked out of the yard; it wriggled to life and changed colour like a chameleon. I stepped down from the pulpit and took my seat near the back again, flower still sitting in my hand. No one had known that we were related, but I was pretty confident they knew now. Chances of the exact same ability popping up in two random classmates were slim to none; in particular when I could alter the colour of the petals to exactly the shade of his with ease.

            “Thank you, Willa,” the minister stated as he retook the audience, “and now, unless anyone else has words, we’ll move on to the burial portion of the celebration of life.” He motioned for the pallbearers to rise and half of the front row got noisily to their feet; they were mainly guys Josh had gone to school with and almost of all of them had a levitation ability. In our school, most of the jocks had similar abilities.

            As they slowly, solemnly lifted the casket with various magics and headed out the door, the minister beckoned for everyone else to follow. I made sure I was at the back of the line so I could think in peace; a lot of the people here were chattering animatedly as they wound through the cemetery. Honestly, Josh would have liked a more exciting and dramatic funeral.

            The minister said a few more words when we all reached the pit in the ground; he seemed a little distracted, but so was I. After that, people started to disperse, most off to a bar, and a gravedigger eyed the dwindling crowd with glassy eyes.

            Kneeling to the side of the headstone, I tipped my hand, which was starting to wrinkle under the moist dirt, and let the tiny flower fall to the ground. Where it landed, the roots began to work their way into the earth like worms, wriggling and shifting the world around them. Finally, the little blue thing struggled to an upright position and gently swayed under its own weight. I cupped my hands around it and willed the flower to grow taller so it wouldn’t fall when I left; magically grown flowers tended not to be as hearty if you didn’t put in the time and effort. Josh never did.