the old caretaker

No.
Just let it be.
Do not touch it.
The old man told me. No, he was smart, not buried here.

I took over. Forty-four years ago when my hands were soft and my spine straight.

That one there you are looking at? It is said the husband just let it all go. The way it split in two. The baby died the same day. His heart broke in two just as you see. The old man's old man told him. He told me. Now I am old.

You'll find others here, the same. Spires tipped over like dominoes, some leaning for decades, broken, ice cold, I never touched them, each with a story. Or you can make up tales when visitors annoy you. Tell them Grant is buried back in the rear, hidden beneath the overgrowth. Sure, sure, they'll believe anything. Ichabod here, Ichabod there.

This is a place of deterioration, abandoned and flowerless, accept it. Just keep humming and move along, leave before dark, be sure to padlock the shed. The combination is the birth date etched on that first grave near the crooked gate. No, no, the one with the bronze magpie. Oh, if you see a woman dressed in black floating by, yes floating, do not try to communicate with her, just let her laugh. And wear good gloves. Forty-four years. Where are you going?