We walk along the ageing edge of things, reading tombstones like book titles. Everyone has a story, you say, and I wonder what percentage of my story is a prank. It’s all too depressing here, you say, but I find Highgate strangely calming, as if existing amongst these fates is an affirmation. And the wind blows leaves around my feet, it pipes a little tune over the empty flower vases. I think they’re playing our song, I say, but you don’t see the humour in it.

Only clouds and light
The wind singing as it spins
Quiet buried away

dVerse “Changes” and in Haibun form. Image: Highgate Cemetery in London