Epitaph

Epitaph
Robyn Macy

She found the unsent letters, browned, worn. They were entries from a time she only knew from textbooks. Broken script described years in quarantined barracks, now evacuated and immortalized in museums. She tried to trace the numbers, the ones etched in his notebooks, in his papers, on his skin; she tried to trace them back to where they came from. Nothing prepared her for the ghosts behind the gates, for the deafening silent cries of children only visible by the abandoned shoes left in the dirt. Standing where the letters were written, right where lovers and family were torn from each other, she cried. From the ruins she found gravestones. The numbers tattooed on their arms, that had become their identity, she realized, were nowhere found on their epitaphs.

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Robyn Macy, a Professional Writing Major at SUNY Cortland, is currently working at Time Out New York. She co-writes her school’s newly founded satire magazine, The Potato (http://cortlandpotato.tumblr.com/) and runs the Cortland’s radio station. She hopes you enjoy her very first (out of school) published piece.

Image: What Dreams May Come, By Stephen Martin