Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE SUN was shining all too brightly on a day like this.
That was all Momo could think about, numb to the pain swallowing her inside out as her footsteps carried in the cemetery, a sea of gravestones basking in the waning daylight. There was an empty feeling in her chest as she approached her parents' graves. Birds continued to chirp from above, a stark reminder of how the world carried on without her, oblivious to her anguish.
The universe was too cruel to her sometimes.
"How have you been, Mother and Father?" She mustered out with an empty expression fixed upon her features. Her eyes drifted down to the fresh flower bouquets in her hands, which she knelt down and placed both on each of their graves, bowing silently to pay her respects.
Today marked the anniversary of her parents' passing, a day etched in her memory as a wound that had never truly healed. The clear blue cloudless sky above offered no solace, no sympathy for her grief. She couldn't help but feel bitter.
"Ah, the flowers started to wilt..." Momo muttered to herself in a faint whisper as she looked at the dried out flowers she had left on their graves during her previous visits. She knelt beside the tombstones, her fingers trembling as she traced the engraved names of her parents. "Looks like I have to get new ones, huh?"
A heavy silence weighed in the air.
...
Momo wasn't going to cry.
She was not going to cry.
She had recited it to herself over and over again before coming here, that she wouldn't cry. Because she knew that would only end in revisiting those painful memories. She didn't want to relive that misery from before again. But just sitting by here, beside her parents, the memories of their warmth, their love, came rushing back like a tidal wave, and Momo was completely powerless to stop it. And she was drowning deeper, in her own sea of guilt and pain, yet she was powerless.
Her eyes stung.
"It's been too long... I miss you so much..." Her voice quivered terribly, vision blurring up as tears welled in her obsidian orbs, tracing salty trails down her pale cheeks and dampening her lashes. She just couldn't understand why they had to leave her so soon. Maybe if they had given her just a bit more time, a bit more time to prepare...
The sunlight disappeared, leaving a peaceful yet eerily quiet atmosphere in its place and intensifying the heaviness in her chest. She could almost hear their voices in the rustle of the leaves if she listened closely, see their smiles if she closed her eyes. But they were just cruel tricks her mind played on her.
Leaning on her parents' graves, Momo's shoulders shook as she covered her face with her lithe fingers and broke down, her sobs echoing in the desolate cemetery. She clutched at the earth beneath her with one hand as the other stayed covering her eyes, feeling the coolness of the soil in her shaking fingers. It was as if the ground held the only connection she had left to her parents.
