I started bringing seven crimson roses every Sunday, wrapping them the same way Malini used to smooth the paper. But each week, by Tuesday, they were gone—not wilted, not scattered, just vanished. Suspecting vandals, I set up a trail cam. What I saw stunned me: a thin boy, maybe eleven, lifting each rose carefully, as if afraid to wake it. The next day he returned, sitting cross-legged by the headstone, the roses in his lap. Around his neck hung Malini’s silver locket—the one she wore until the morning she was buried.
I confronted him gently. His name was Reza. He said the “lady in the red dress” told him this was a safe place. Malini’s red dress. Her braid. Her bangles. He described her as if she had been there. The roses, he explained, were for his mother in the hospital.
“She said they were from someone who loved her very much, and meant for someone who needed love.” I couldn’t argue. Instead, we made an unspoken pact. Every Sunday, I’d bring two bundles—one for Malini, one for Reza’s mom. At 3:30 we’d sit, read poems, and share silence. Months later, his mother walked through the cemetery, recovering.
She thanked me with eyes that carried a weight of relief. Before long, Reza drifted back into his own life, but on Malini’s birthday, a single rose still appears. The locket stayed with him. Some things, I realized, aren’t meant to be buried. They’re meant to keep beating, carried forward.