Grave Keys

They were there, under the earth and buried with the dead. We dug them out and laid them one by one along the wooden picnic bench so they looked like bodies laid out for graves. Though they had no encomiums, no sepulchral monuments.

They were covered with dirt and grass and roots, those old skeleton keys. We considered putting them back; after all, the dead may want them.

In the end we decided to leave them on that table, the sun casting long lean shadows across it that overlapped like the wires of a birdcage.

“The rain will wash them clean,” one of us said.

“The sun will dry them,” you pointed out.

I looked to you, because you were always right, so when you said they would be fine I didn’t contradict you.

I went back later, I thought they would get lonely, our keys. I wanted to see them clean and shiny in the sun, but they were covered in rust, cracked mud and mould.

I laid them over the graves one by one in a long line, pushed them into the earth so only the brown tips of them rose above the grass like rotted teeth.

When I went to see them the next day, they were gone. Maybe the ground had sucked them up, I thought. Maybe they went back to the dead.

You came and joined me, and a few others, and said, “Look, see? The sun and rain must have made them all nice and shiny and someone’s come and taken them away.”

I did not contradict you.

We never saw those keys again. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay