People love cemeteries.

  I don't mean just the Goths and vampy types in dark clothing and swirling capes and dresses. I don't mean the Dark Academics in their wool jackets and scarves with their leather-bound journals. I don't mean the tortured artists and poets coming here for somber inspiration.

  They visit, of course, but I speak of people. Of families.

  I suppose it calls back to Victorian times when families and friends played and picnicked in the soft grass under the canopy of the even then elderly oaks. Children's games weaving in and out through the gravestones, adults on soft blankets unfurled, enjoying tea, wine, and a summery repast.

  There is romance here. Romance on every level.

  Autimn comes, the 'spooky season', Samhain thinning the veil between the living and the departed. This place is most loved and venerated then. Witches and wizards burning candles, dancing, chanting spells, calling forth ancient wisdom of the dead. There are lovers, couples making vows and exchanging kisses in the dewy grass beneath a harvest moon. Marigolds and candles in celebration of Dias de los Muertos, feasting and singing. This a place where death can be visited safely.

  There are other visitors too.

  The wildlife, residents of this quiet place running hither and yon, making desperate preparations for the deep cold of winter.

  There are, of course, funerals.

  Sad gatherings in the cold, rain and snow. Mourners and men of religion bundled against the elements to show respects and say final farewells, and after that, melancholy visitors of the departed. They will come and talk to the dead. They will leave flowers and offerings. But soon, they stop coming.

  Winter arrives.

  The Dark Time.

  The trees display stark skeletal forms against the sharp grays and whites of sky and snow, adding an archetectural element that compliments the vertical stones and crypts. Gone are the vibrant colors and conversations of birds and insects. The earth sleeps, snow blurs the spaces between the ground and the sky.

  Then they come.

  The broken-hearted and the lost.

  That's when she came.

  She wore her pain like armor. A pain of passion.

  Passion.

  The blessing and bane of the living. A powerful force that motivates like no other. This is most evident among the young. Those who have more days before them than behind. The ones who believe that happiness can be attained and is worth bleeding for. They are the ones who feel most viscerally the keen kiss of passion. The heat and power that ignites lust, wins battles, and fulfills heroic quests. But it is a loaded gun, isnt it? Dangerous and unpredictable. For her darker sister is Despair, and despair is always seeking to balance the scales. I have found that those most passionate are those who find themselves in the darkest embrace of despair, and the most trusting and open of heart seem to be the most passionate.

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  The first night she visited, she wandered in slowly, without direction. Despair clung to her like the frost on the gravestones. She was small, slight, her age impossible to guess, perhaps 16 or 17. Her footsteps brushed away by the sweeping of her skirts as she drifted through, her tiny gloved hand occasionally touching a stone. Her hair was long, but its color concealed beneath her cloak.

  Her tale, though unknown to me in its specifics, was one seen countless times over. Perhaps a lost love, or a death she could not reconcile with. Perhaps it was simply some tragedy that was too heavy for her spirit to bear. Regardless, she was in a play in which eveyone has been every character at one time or another. The Lover, the Beloved, the Betrayer, the Bereaved, all have touched all through time..

  The reason was unimportant really. There was no way for me to intervene, even if I had been able to. These were her moments and must remain so.

  She was pretty. Not in the head-turning sense of glamorous beauty, but a reserved, natural light that would never dull with age.

  She began visiting often, almost nightly. I followed her gentle tread as she explored the quiet corners of the cemetery each night, never making a sound.

  There was a part of me that secretly hoped that the darkness she felt would not become the tragedy that those who loved her would endure, but she was mortal and fragile, and I had no influence over her mind or heart.

  It was a full moon the last night she came. It was high and bright with a silver brilliance that one could almost read by.

  She slipped silently past the iron gates, She was different tonight. No cloak or shawl, just a beautiful dress that fit her graceful form perfectly. Likely some heirloom of a beloved grandmother, passed from daughter to daughter. She had her long dark hair tied back in a single ribbon, soft tresses like a silken waterfall ending at ther waist. She wore no shoes or gloves. Her tiny bare feet leaving small impressions in the snow, her hands, exposed to the sharp cold. She carried a bouquet of roses, their color lost in the bleaching moonlight.

  I knew this part. I had seen it before.

  She walked with purpose, this time to a part of the cemetery long forgotten, a spot that seldom receives visitors any more. She found a grave who's stone no longer displayed a readable inscription. She knelt before it, respectfully, reverently, the roses trembling in her grip. Then, without any dramatic words of farewell or whispered goodbyes, she laid herself on the snowy grave.

  She was gone.

  I did not know if it was poison that stilled her heart, or simply a desire to leave this world to itself. Either way, she was here now.

  I felt a sorrow I had forgotten.

  Her tiny form became part of that neglected spot, fragile and beautiful, an ornament of grief and finality.

  I did my best to keep the snow off of her that night. She deserved that at least. I don't know why, perhaps it was to somehow protect her in her delicate slumber, perhaps it was an echo of something I had not felt in centuries, but it was the least, and the most I could do for her.

  They discovered her of course, they always do.

  The morning brought the expected clamor. Tearful gasps, shocked whispers, questions of, "Why?" they asked again and again, as if the answers would somehow appear written in the snow or carved on that lonely stone. There were laments of, "If we had only known..." As if having the knowledge would have changed anything. Mortal existence is far too short to offer any definitive solutions. Most energy is spent toward survival, preserving mind, heart and soul, leaving very little to share with those in need.

  She rests here now.

  A youthful tragedy written into the history of this cemetery, but I feel that somehow she has awakened something in me. Something I thought long dead.

  Now, every spring, when the snow melts and the earth softens, the place where she lay is the first to bloom. Snowdrops, delicate and pure. Tiny white flowers pushing through the frost.

  A tiny reminder of her fleeting presence, of her silent sorrow.

  A whisper among the stones.