![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Come on friends get up now, you're not alone at all
Steve goes on the third. He walks the white ranks of stones like a general through his troops, names he doesn't know and won't remember, still laid up against his heart and conscience by their presence.
He's far from the only one there. Cypress Hills might have closed to special veteran internment, but there are still generations of heroes here. Some families wander, counting their way to familiar headstones or trying to find a parent for the first time. He can tell the difference. He visited his father enough times as a child to recognize the things that decades haven't changed about this place.
He passes a group from some memorial organization or other, decking out graves designated as historically significant by someone who probably never saw his countrymen die far from home. The dismissed masses with their new ghost-colored uniforms are the ones Steve pays particular attention to, the ones that he'll cry for later, when he's back in his room and alone.
It's in the character of these places to be quiet, sound eaten up by the voiceless below. Even with the graveside barbecues, laughter, patriotic ribbons and memorial flowers. Even when everything fights to feel alive with motion on one of the handful of days when noise is the norm instead of a disrespectful exception.
He's in his dress uniform, which garners him a few nods and passing glances, but not much more. If the people here recognize him, they don't show it, or maybe they recognize him and that's why they leave him alone.
Steve walks the white ranks of stones until he reaches familiar dates, names he does remember, though he's never seen the faces of the people who used them. He remembers them because he passes them almost every week, no matter what path he takes. He remembers them because this is the place where his walks always end. In the middle of children visiting grandparents, grandmothers visiting fathers. In the eyes of history, nobodies visiting nobodies, and today he's one of them. Today, of all days, he's one of them.
Just an old soldier from Brooklyn, visiting friends.
He's far from the only one there. Cypress Hills might have closed to special veteran internment, but there are still generations of heroes here. Some families wander, counting their way to familiar headstones or trying to find a parent for the first time. He can tell the difference. He visited his father enough times as a child to recognize the things that decades haven't changed about this place.
He passes a group from some memorial organization or other, decking out graves designated as historically significant by someone who probably never saw his countrymen die far from home. The dismissed masses with their new ghost-colored uniforms are the ones Steve pays particular attention to, the ones that he'll cry for later, when he's back in his room and alone.
It's in the character of these places to be quiet, sound eaten up by the voiceless below. Even with the graveside barbecues, laughter, patriotic ribbons and memorial flowers. Even when everything fights to feel alive with motion on one of the handful of days when noise is the norm instead of a disrespectful exception.
He's in his dress uniform, which garners him a few nods and passing glances, but not much more. If the people here recognize him, they don't show it, or maybe they recognize him and that's why they leave him alone.
Steve walks the white ranks of stones until he reaches familiar dates, names he does remember, though he's never seen the faces of the people who used them. He remembers them because he passes them almost every week, no matter what path he takes. He remembers them because this is the place where his walks always end. In the middle of children visiting grandparents, grandmothers visiting fathers. In the eyes of history, nobodies visiting nobodies, and today he's one of them. Today, of all days, he's one of them.
Just an old soldier from Brooklyn, visiting friends.