Anatomy in Bloom

The path is dry today, pale dust lifting around Elsbeth’s shoes as she crosses the cemetery with a few stems pinched between her fingers — daisies, a sprig of blue, whatever was still standing along the path. She pauses at the gate only to push it wider with her hip, then continues on, unhurried.

She kneels where the grass has grown uneven and reaches for the chain at her throat, lifting the small copper leg free from where it rests against her chest. The metal is warm from her skin. She steadies it in her palm and feeds the stems in one by one, trimming a crushed end with her nails, turning them until they sit upright in the narrow hollow.

“You would have taken the tallest ones,” Elsbeth says, adjusting a petal caught under the rim. Her thumb follows the line of the ankle, slow, familiar, before she lets the piece fall back against her collarbone. The flowers shift when she moves, small and bright against the copper, and she stays there a moment longer, looking down at the patch of earth.