I’m in the cemetery where my Aunt Jann is buried. Sitting on her headstone. It’s nighttime, of course. I prefer it for conversations with dead people. It hides the unpleasantries. She lies on the cracked ground above her urn.
When you died it really changed the flow of our lives, I tell her. I didn’t expect that.
She doesn’t respond. She probably doesn’t know.
Did you know Mama had a stroke the day after your funeral?
She scoffs, a throaty smoked tone.
She had to leave her house, her job. She can’t function alone any more. Everything from our past is gone.
Don’t blame that on me, she says. Lynn was always trying to take on everything. Even when we were younger. I never asked her to be my nursemaid.
I swallow my response to that and ask instead, Why was there so much tension between you two? Surely you can tell me now.
She shrugs, drifting. She was always trying so hard. It just made me want to smack her down. Always trying to tell me what to do, how to be.
I stare at the full moon