Beautiful Graves

by L.J. Shen

“Be my forever, Ever. Be my wife. The mother of my children. The person I file joint taxes with. I want it all. The good and the bad. The boring and the interesting. And the in between, which we will determine ourselves.” I know what he is asking, even if he doesn’t go down on one knee. Even when he doesn’t produce a ring. Even when we are both as still as the gravestones we are surrounded by. In another world, in another universe, we’d have been married. Maybe even with a kid. In another universe, maybe Mom would still be with us. Maybe tonight, we’d be having dinner while she babysat our child. And then there’s another world. One where Joe and I went our separate ways. One where Joe is asking someone else to marry him right about now—maybe Presley—and I’m sitting in my room, rearranging my album collection and still hating my life. There are so many versions to reality. All of them dictated by the slightest decision. But right now, I know I made the right one. I reach my arm between us, opening my palm. Guiding him to safety. “Come with me,” I say, paying him back for all those years when he saved me from drowning. “There’s another chapter in our story I want to write.”