and then there was [one] → the funerals

The two coffins before me look the exact same.

They are both made of the same ebony wood that is customary for burials around District 11. Their creator has done a magnificent job of making them nearly exact replicas, as if the boxes are actually relatives of one another. How ironic. Each has a set of matching steel nails just as dark as the wood they were pounded into. Twenty-one nails border the front of each coffin, locking away their deceased inside. Within the ring of nail heads are the only things that keep the coffins from being completely identical.

To my right, one can make out the imprint of a single 'I' in the middle. It is the simple beginning to the very lethal phrase, "I volunteer." And if I squint, it reminds me of a glaive handle.

On the surface of the one to my left, there is a 'S' engraved into its center. From a distance, the white scratches against the inky wood make the letter look like a glimmering star against a black night sky.

As I watch them, the freezing flurry of snow falling down around me, I know I'll have to cover them both up soon. I've only just finished digging both graves, right next to Benat's grave where they belong, and placing the coffins inside but if I wait too long, the snow might begin to stick and make my struggle all the more real. It was hard enough stabbing the shovel through the frozen soil once, so I dread the idea that I will wait too long to begin again and the clumps I've just excavated will freeze together like before. I don't think I have enough strength to go through that all over again. I don't think I have enough strength for any of this. What am I even doing? I somehow volunteered to take on the excruciating task of burying both of them. I should know by now that volunteering for anything is lethal and I know that's true because I feel like I'm dying.

The tears that roll down my face are warm for a few seconds before they take on their own corpse-like cold. My hands, once kept warm by the constant rubbing of the shovel handle as I dug through the earth, now shake with a similar chill. I feel cold all over, numb to anything else but my own trembling. Where do I begin? How do I say good-bye? Who do I speak to first? Wet eyes falling on Iago's coffin, I am quiet. The sight of his mangled body on a television screen contrasts horrifically in my head against the memory of him sleeping in his coffin. I can remember it so vividly, even if we all only looked at the body for a few minutes while claiming him at the Justice Building. His face had looked as pale as the moon. Everything had been washed clean off of him and he looked brand new, but broken still, all at once. You could tell by how colorless he was that something was still wrong, but the sheer amount of work the Capitol doctors had done when cleaning him practically made him look immortal.

I crouch down where his coffin rests inside the grave. "You are excused," I whisper before I inhale violently and snort up all the gunk threatening to run out of my nose. "Everything you did was for a reason," I keep speaking even as my voice quakes with the hollowness I feel, "And that means it's ok." My right hand slips out of my pocket and my numb fingers run across the carved in initial of Iago's first name. "Find Benat's stars. H-h-he'll help. You did everything for Sampson. You can be f-f-f-forgiven," my shivering does not help me pronounce anything I want to say as I blubber like a newborn. I watch Iago's box intently. It looks so small for such a mature kid like him. It's hard to imagine he was only 14 years young. But he'd been old for 14, wise in ways that some full-fledged adults aren't. It's so obvious how wise I'm not because I can barely think of anything to say to the hero that saved Sampson from the arena. I pat the box and breathe out the words, "You're going to be just fine." I want to make sure that Iago understands that he bares no judgement for what he did in the arena. What's done was done and only forgiveness remained to be handed out like hands of cards. And Iago deserved the whole deck. "I'm sorry you had to die for him," I say as I wipe my face and nose on my sleeve. I can't even feel the knots in my stomach anymore. It's all just one mess of sorrow and emptiness.

I can barely bring myself to look at the coffin marked with the 'S'. Sampson's death is inexplicably tragic. I cannot fathom how it has all come down to this. Iago died for him and then pneumonia went and killed him, or that's what I tell people at least. If they knew he'd run away, the Peacekeepers would be after him like hounds and no matter how angry I am at him, I can't let that happen. So I ordered an extra coffin, filled it with bags of rocks, and now I can't help but stare at it hopelessly as I prepare to bury it. If people knew the truth about his coffin, I fear they would hate him. Hate him for leaving me behind and being so foolishly selfish in his quest for escape. So it's better that he is dead, killed by some foolish disease. Even though it's better to live this lie, his letter still burns in my pocket.

"You're an idiot!" I scream suddenly, scratching viciously at the tears in my eyes so that I can see Sampson's 'grave' through the blurriness. "He died for you! And this is what you do!?" I'm screeching, pointing towards Iago's coffin like Sampson is actually here to look. I can feel the anger inside me beginning to melt away the numbing cold. More tears flow readily and I shake uncontrollably. "Sampson, damn it! Damn you, you ungrateful little shit," I roar before suddenly kicking his little tombstone. It doesn't move and the pain that bursts across my toes kills my anger and travels through me so suddenly, I fall. My body crumbles to the cold, wet earth and I begin to sob. My hands cover my face as I can't hold back any longer.

I weep.

"I'm still here," I whimper into my palms. It's a type of ugly crying, one I haven't done in years. But now, I can't help it. Sampson's abandonment has pushed me far beyond the point of no return. Looking up towards the row of three tombstones, each reading 'Izar' somewhere on it, I can barely differentiate them from one another through my tears. "All of you are gone." I grunt as if someone has hit me, clutching my stomach as I kneel before their tombs. I might puke. "Everyone's gone and I'm still here," I wail before slamming my fists into the dirt, "What happened to our rocking chairs on our porch? What happened to growing old together?" My fingers dig into the mounds of freshly dug up soil and I begin dragging it onto their coffins. The ground is hard and freezing, but I rake my nails along it anyway. I wheeze as the sound of the dirt raining down on the wood fills the air. "How could you leave me behind?" my chin quivers and for a moment, I consider collapsing into one of the graves and letting myself rot on top of one of the coffins. I'm not sure I even have the energy do that. The only thing I'm sure of is that I can't do this. Yet, I was still there, filling the graves with my emptiness. Because I have to do this, for them.

Once I've replaced all the dirt, hands caked with freezing mud and warm blood from my mangled fingertips, I still can't breathe easier. I thought that once I finished closing them up, I'd feel some kind of relief. Nothing muffles the pain in my heart. Putting them in their graves has not given me any kind of closure, only a wider wound that I fear will never close. The pain is so alive in my body that it just might kill me. I'll need a coffin of my own by the end of this torture. Pulling tighter into myself, I lay my head down on my hands, knees tucked beneath my chest, and try to look like I'm praying or whispering some kind of good-byes. But in reality, I just continue to sob because everything is wrong and they are all gone.

Out of so many, I am just one.