The Parade That Outlived the Living
Morning landed on the town of Duskfield like a mislaid bell. The funeral hearse rolled out from the churchyard, followed by a line that stretched beyond sight, down the sleepy lanes, through the market square, and toward the old river road. People shuffled in quiet rows, each lamp held high, each face softened by rain and memory. The town had seen many funerals, but this one did not end, not since last winter when a priest whispered that some things refuse to die as long as there is a reason to keep walking.
From the corner bench I watched as the procession bled into the wider world: pallbearers in neat, stubborn black; widows with hands clasped like birds; children who counted the steps aloud and then forgot the numbers. A choir stood under the elms, singing a hymn no one remembered learning. The notes were pale and brittle, as if they might crack at any moment. The fog clung to the lamplight, turning each glow into a small, patient eye watching the march go on.
- Pallbearers steady the weight of a future that won't be laid to rest.
- Mourners carry candles that never burn down, only grow warmer with time.
- A boy with a kite that never drifts downward, only forward, as if the air itself is a road.
- Two horses with bellies low, hooves mute, moving in a rhythm that isn't a rhythm.
- A choir that sings in a language older than memory, or perhaps older than remorse.
“As long as the last tear dries, they walk,” the old clockmaker whispered, though no clock on the square kept time at all.
Night pressed closer, and the line stretched farther still, curling around the river bend, threading past graves that wore lilac in their hair. I followed with the crowd, noticing how the living whittled away by degrees: a neighbor stepping out of the column to greet a streetlamp; a mechanic who reopened his shop just to shut it again; a couple who forgot where they parked their sorrow. The air grew thick with a scent of rain and wood smoke, and the parade advanced as if life itself were reluctantly being relinquished to a patient, inexhaustible march.
Then the truth presented itself in a mirror of rain on a storefront window. I saw my own name painted on a stone beside the road, a name I had not spoken aloud in years. The realization did not frighten me so much as it did make a quiet sense: the parade was not for them to be mourned, but for us to become part of what remains when memory has no more tears to shed. When the last lamp in the distance burned to a pale ember, the line paused, and a silence rose like a door opening. We stepped forward, and the road—endless, patient—welcomed us back into the darkness from which we came.