A Simple Lunch

By Peter Bowden


The sun was high and clean, the kind that bleaches the stones and warms the skin without apology. They sat on a folded blanket between two worn markers—“Beloved Wife, 1887–1932” and “Infant Son, 1904.” She unwrapped sandwiches from wax paper, and he poured lemonade from a thermos, the ice inside clinking like wind chimes. They ate in silence for a while, the kind of silence that comes from long knowing. Old friends, yes. But something had changed. The nearness of her hand to his. The way he watched her brush crumbs from her lap.

Afterward, they wandered among the graves, letting the names speak first. Edna May, Harold R., Little Lottie—all of them now sunlit ghosts. He read aloud an epitaph: “She hath done what she could.” The line hung in the air like perfume. She smiled softly, the corner of her mouth twitching the way it used to when they were young and both married to other lives. “They all had stories,” she said. “But no one’s left to tell them.” He looked at her, really looked, and felt the slow astonishment of possibility. Like finding a letter addressed to you in a stranger’s handwriting.

They walked back to the blanket and sat again, not quite touching. The light was golden now, dusted across the grass, and cicadas whirred in the trees. Somewhere nearby, a squirrel chattered at a bird. He reached for her hand—not bold, just true. She didn’t pull away. The past seemed less like a weight and more like a threshold. Their love was like a thunderclap. It was a simple lunch, a warm day, and the miracle of being here, together.

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