✴ Damien ✴
The air was still as I walked through the gates of the Wintervale cemetery, my breath forming faint clouds in the crisp morning chill. Snow blanketed the ground, softening the sharp edges of gravestones and casting an eerie, quiet beauty over the place. Today I was about to break my promise to my mother, and it only felt right that I talked to her first. My mother’s grave was in the far corner, beneath the shade of a towering oak tree that now stood bare, its branches reaching skyward like skeletal fingers. I stopped a few feet away, as I stared at her gravestone. I crouched down and brushed away a thin layer of snow that had settled on the stone.
“Hi, Mom,” I murmured, my voice barely audible against the stillness. For a moment, I just sat there, as the silence settled around
