The coffin glides like a ship beneath the trees, rocked gently on a tide of shoulders, tacks slowly along the pooled lanes. Inside it, my friend lies beneath her cold, incurious hands. I know their touch, like gloves of frozen paper; as always.

‘How are you feeling?’’ I ask.

Small muscles move under her white face. She looks at me. ‘I’m so glad you came.’

‘Are you alright?’

She searches across my face from eye to eye, comparing eyes. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘You’ll be alright.’ I look away. Rain sweeps through us, lifting our cuffs and hems. The faces here are familiar; ‘friends’ most of us. We wear the trappings of grief, feel most comfortable like this.

‘I’m sorry I did this.’ She watches me, waiting like a hunter for the prey to break loose. I hold out a sentence: about apologies. One of my cool sentences.

The scent of death. My heart prowls like an edgy lion. ‘I was just so depressed,’ she says. Her nervous hands scurry like mice, ‘I just wanted to stop the world spinning. I didn’t care what happened. I just. . .’

‘You’re fine now. Nothing to worry about.’ I look up. Overhead, branches sway like seaweed in the late breeze, forming their own umbrellas of rain. In the suburbs of tombstones rain is numbing the trees in mist.

‘Does everyone know?’ she asks suddenly. Her lips are hidden. She may be crying. I don’t ask; I too enjoy the illusions of solitude.

‘We said you fell.’

‘I’m a little afraid of the future.’ Her eyes swivel like a cat’s ears. Her fear stretches out to me, worming into my nostrils. She watches my face. I smile. It is possible to make of the face a mask, and of the mask a face.

‘There’s no need. Your friends are here.’

‘Here?’ She tries to look behind her, is held in – the casket’s hostage.

‘Yes.’ I stand helplessly in my best suit; the suit holds me together.

‘My friends,’ she sighs, seems to sink into the whiteness of satin.

The pit is sudden. It appears black at first, but closer the underbelly of topsoil can be seen, wet and rough with small rocks. Rain has made it slick as a brown throat. Her casket is laid beside it, incongruous as a piece of beautiful furniture in a field.

‘Is there anything you need?’

She stares; her eyes drift in their fear. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ I repeat, lost for gestures.

‘Thanks.’ She closes her eyes. Without words, her face lies in the satin like a pearl, clear, and smooth, and without desire.

The words are said to the casket. They bestow their grace on our mouths. Out public gestures. Words flutter about our ears like frightened birds.

‘Right as rain in no time,’ I say, touch her cheek.

The casket begins to sink into the earth, tripping like a drowning ship. It is lowered by straps that pull small stones from the edges of the grave. A shoulder of casket digs at the mud wall, tries to catch hold, continues to fall, bearing a handful of earth. The box submereges into deep shadow, comes to lie in the cold, unconsoling mud of the pit. Rain spits in, keen to begin the filling in. It runs like fingers down my face.

‘She’s better off now,’ someone says.

I tiptoe away, down the narrow lanes, past the mangle of conversations. I wear my release like a cap pulled down to my eyebrows, an armour. I speak to no-one.

 

(Published in Westerly; a Quarterly Review, Vol 30, No 1)