She Had a System

Google sent me through a cemetery

at two in the afternoon,

routing around construction.

I could have turned at the gate. I didn't.

I walked the diagonal path

in real sunlight—

not the soft kind

but the flat, mid-afternoon kind,

nobody's version of beautiful.

Names I didn't know on stones.

Dates I did the math on

without meaning to.

Near the center, a woman

on her knees at a headstone,

pulling weeds.

Not frantically.

With a method.

She had a plastic grocery bag

beside her, folded open,

set on the grass like she'd thought

about where to put it.

She was filling it

with what she pulled.

She didn't look up once.

She was humming something—

not a song I knew,

maybe not a song at all,

just a sound she made

while she worked.

I slowed down.

The bag was maybe half full.

She had a system.

She knew exactly what she was doing here

and I had my phone in my hand

and no appointment I was actually late for.

I kept walking.

Slowly.