The ground is cold through my jeans. I’ve been sitting long enough that I’ve stopped feeling it.
Daniel Reed. The dates. The blank space underneath where the words were supposed to go.
My mother started three different phrases. Crossed them all out. Eventually the stone mason ran out of patience and left it bare, and she never mentioned it again, and neither did I, because what would we say. What do you carve into granite that covers any of it.
He made terrible puns. Laughed at them before anyone else could. Taught me to read from the backs of cereal boxes because he said anything could be a book if you were bored enough. He drove me to ballet every Saturday for eleven years and his hands were steady on the wheel until they weren’t.
The shaking started when I was twelve.
By sixteen I
