I liked going to the cemetery. Of course I saw an angel face down in a grave. Of course I saw an interesting corruption of my sister’s name. I only grinned. I wandered unspooked. I felt the total chill of unsuperstition. The cemetery winked at me and I winked back.

         I admit I also felt a bit of reverence. Usually I don’t because of being such a little bitch. Spirituality went to me to die, and then I went to the cemetery. I thought about the sweetness of people in the face of the inevitable death of all things. I thought about how human memory is so puny and so defiant, and I smiled like a god even though I was so fuckin mortal. I thought and I thought. I thought about so many lives interlocked, vivid and finished, and I felt some reverence, and that was a relief.

         Then I sat down and immediately five magpies landed in a circle around me. One by one they came very close and inspected me. I was a bit like of course but I was also a bit not like of course. Mostly I was like sheesh because their eyes are really red. And yes, I was also a bit like yes, yes I have been chosen and yes I accept.

         I got up and wandered among the long dead again, smiling my smile. The graves of little children made the bit in the centre of my chest do appropriate things. It did things too about all the headstones still with space left to fill. So many open books, so many dearly beloveds a century dead, next to an empty page.

         On my way out I saw a lady where I’d been sitting before. She was surrounded by magpies, quite at her ease, feeding them bits of her lunch. Then I saw an intact and legible gravestone erected in 1915. I made a mental note of its materials and construction.