Ayanna looked up. She was in front of one of the rose stands. Pink, duck-egg blue, lavender, yellow, rainbow, royal blue, so many shades of red, white. She gathered as many as she could, didn’t care about the cost. Tried to cobble them into something organized while the man watched with a bemused expression. He gave her a dusty vase on the house and seemed a little ashamed for being so terse initially.

The statue down the street looked like an off-brand Mary. Her eyes a little too close together, an actual smile instead of the wan smile of sculptural holiness, brass. A spot on her cheek rubbed shinier. Seven swords piercing her chest. Ayanna set the roses down. Taped on the wall next to the sculpture was a little index card with the words Our Lady of Sorrows. Ayanna was all feelings and soreness. All the roses, the ones she had bought, the ones left from others before her, felt almost like too much to look at. Someone had left a T-shirt of Garfield on a skateboard, a photograph of two girls hugging in front of a bar, letters, postcards, an expensive gold lighter. I should have told her life is so hard because you have to keep relearning over and over how to keep living and being alive. To the world. To other people. I should have found a way to say, to me, you will always be alive. I should have said thank you. I should have said let’s do this forever. Ayanna touched the rose petals, the top of the lighter. There were people waiting for her, but she lingered here where other people had also stood missing their dead.