we are all going to die someday, and i hope it is so beautiful

i bought a bouquet of jasmine on the way to recoleta cemetary.  i wasn't really sure what i was going to do with it; at the time, i only thought that i loved the lush scent of the flowers in the heavy summer air.  at the gates of the cemetary, the attendant asked me where i was from; when i told her, she asked who the flowers could possibly be for, and i said i would figure it out when i got there.  and so, flowers in hand, i wandered through the corridors of the cemetary, listening to the stories of the dead.  this one is a hero-pilot of the falklands war, his exploits memorialized in liquid black stone, whose plane disappeared decades later -- by curious coincidence, on argentina's national aviation day.  this one's family name is carved proudly into a granite slab, but the lock to his mausoleum dangles carelessly, rusted, his sargophagus surrounded by weeds and construction trash. this one is evita peron, who needs no introduction and whose grave is beset by throngs of camera-toting tourists who pretend to care.

my flowers went to a nameless grave of no particular beauty or grace, so featureless i might not be able to find it again in the press of spirits waiting to be heard. it might have been anyone.