A black veil shields the widow's shifty eyes from the prying ones of the outside world. They assume she is crying, but her tears are gone. Her heart is gone, blasted to pieces along with the splintered remains of the head lying beneath the lid of her husband's closed mahogany casket. She stands on the rain-soaked grass of the cemetery, trying to watch her husband laid to rest, but her focus falters and she begrudgingly allows her eyes to wander.

Her husband's death has birthed in her great superstition and paranoia. The shock of his murder had resulted in yet another miscarriage, and she became certain that this must be some kind of karma. She cast around her memory, day after day, to recall what she had done to make divine forces rob her of every joy in life. Here now, she shifts her eyes in search of her husband's murderer. She looks again in search of an angry God about to strike her down where she stands. She looks still for the ghost of her husband, perhaps headless, but filled with the love that she needs back now more than ever. She looks for the half-formed, abandoned spirits of the many sons who had died in her womb. She sees nothing.

Through the black lace of her veil, if she squints, she could see loved ones talking and crying, but she does not squint to look for them. Their presence is worthless, as are their words. This ceremony is worthless. Her black veil means nothing. Her husband is gone, and his history? Worthless, too. A husband to a jobless widow. A father to dead fetuses. An officer murdered on call, and what to show for it? His killer walks free, while a stray bullet from the officer's gun had landed in the chest of the perpetrator's twenty-year-old son. An officer made murderer, and murdered all at once. His soul and body damaged in two swift, simultaneous movements from across a parking lot.

Friends had said that a funeral would bring closure. Now her identity feels more lost than ever. No divine spirits are present to wisk him away. No ghosts rise to welcome him to his new resting place. Nothing spectacular happens in this graveyard now. A kind of tent has been erected to shield mourners from the rain, but she stands outside of it's shelter. Her body responds to the chill with gooseflesh and an unsteady quiver, but she does not feel cold. She does not feel a thing. Everything is worthless. Every sensation is gone.