I got off work at three and walked the long way home through the cemetery. Sat on sun-bleached grass in front of someone’s gravestone. Couldn’t make out a name, the words washed away by acid rain or maybe just rain. Pulled a cigarette from my bag. The cheap sort, from a black packet, really no pleasure at all. Rough on the way down but I lit it anyway and took in the sky. Graveyard empty of living souls, all the corpses centuries old, nobody to mourn them. I don’t know where they bury the locals now but it’s not here.
Gina de Mendonca writes creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Her work has been published by Anti-Heroin Chic and Five Minutes. ginademendonca.substack.com