We visited you today. I think she’s too young to understand. She asked me if you turned into a stone.

“Kind of,” I said.

“Why a gray stone?” she asked. “Why not blue or orange or purplegreen?”

I shrugged.

She thought you should have at least dressed up a little.

Sam van der Lugt is a writer and anthropologist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He’s working on some short stories and a PhD thesis. Sometimes, he wonders what to do with all of this existence.