Diminuendo

Robin L. Flanigan

In my early 20s, my rock band guitarist boyfriend and I lived in the caretaker’s mansion of an East Baltimore cemetery. We had a sweet gig—we could live there rent-free as long as we opened the gates each morning and closed them each night. My life revolved around my boyfriend, who’d transformed the basement morgue into a recording studio and spent more time there with friends and strangers than with me. The louder our house got, with groupies and music, the quieter I became. When my boyfriend’s band was away for a show, I’d pull back the upstairs curtains and stare at the tombstones. Sometimes I’d meander through row after row of granite markers. I wanted to be spooked, for something to draw a primordial sound from a body that felt as shuttered as the vacant hot dog factory next door. Nearly 2,000 plots around me and nothing but stillness, silence. Three decades later my therapist repeats back what she hears—a string of relationships that have left me muffled or mute. “Amplify what you need. Where is your voice?” I tell her I don’t think I believe in reincarnation.