All Our Shimmering Skies

by Trent Dalton

‘You should write the facts of this story only on tissue paper. But you should carve its meaning in stone.’

nothing else. She’s smiling. She’s waiting. So much love inside a cemetery. So much loss, but so much love. It’s the one thing Violet appreciated about gravedigging. She called it ‘the romance of the cemetery’, though Horace never understood what she meant. ‘Ain’t nuthin’ romantic about it,’ he said. ‘Just holes for dust an’ bones.’ But Violet saw the poetry in the place.

‘Is there a land in this world more in awe of oblivion? Death resides in its branches, in its rivers, in its soil. Death crawls here and death slithers. It bites and chomps and infects and infuses. Tell me of a land more determined to kill those who would dare embrace its beauty.’