Happy birthday, Alicia! It's not much, but it is Iris, and I hope you like it.
Enjoy!
The day after the funeral, Iris visits the grave.
It's a rainy day, unremarkable – she's pleased he was buried yesterday, in the sunshine and the wind. The rain makes a dull hush-shush-ing sound.
"I" – she stops, reminds herself to breathe, though the lump in her throat makes it difficult. She begins again with something more mundane than what she was planning: "Hello."
For whatever reason she expects an answer, and gets none. Something stabs at her heart; her eyes start to water, because there will never be an answer. Which is a concept she had trouble acknowledging yesterday: it's not just his physical body that's gone. His voice died with him, too.
Iris opens and closes her mouth, struggling to speak, wondering: did mine die with him?
A little sob escapes her clamped-together lips: apparently not.
She stands up, staggering, the mud clinging to her leggings. She looks helplessly at the grave, at the wilting flowers littered around it. It's so damn quiet.
She is suffocating in it.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, she runs away. Silence, unfortunately, is faster than she, and follows apace.
The rustling of the leaves is almost enough to lull Iris to sleep. She will not sleep, though – she fears nightmares, of the moment of death and the dripping knife, the light leaving his eyes; of the body in its iron-pressed oh-so-crisp starched clothes, of the coffin, and the oppressive silence. Of the headstone.
The headstone, with its epitaph. It doesn't match who it's written of at all. Too stiff and dry, like the collar, like the body.
Yesterday she had read the epitaph and fled, heeding not the calls of the other attendees. Iris doesn't remember where she went, only that she awoke with a ringing in her ears and an aching jaw. And then, today, she came back, to apologize.
She will not cry for him. Heaven knows she's shed enough tears in her life, over people living and dead, and – well, she has discovered that people aren't the only ones who suffer mortality. Sometimes happiness does.
She wishes her guilt could, too.