I entered the cemetery from the north side of the lot through a black wrought iron gate opening into the property. The small plot sat innocuously between brick homes built in an era when horses dragged wood-wheeled carts along dirt roads and children ran along beside them through the rising dust. Those same hoof-beaten streets still exist today, though now concealed under countless skins of asphalt, shed and regrown in the years since.

I followed the straight path, short grasses and dandelions pushing through the uneven cobbles. About halfway across the lot, I encountered a man seated on a bench. He remained perfectly upright against the seat back, tall and thin and wearing a full-brimmed hat and dark suit that cast him from another time or place. An ornate wooden box rested on his lap. His hands lay across the decorated lid, elegant fingers reaching over its intricacies, the myriad engravings vining across an exterior patinaed with age. The man noticed me admiring the box and smiled. Let me show you, he said.

He lifted his hands and hinged the lid open toward himself, exposing a gleaming metal viscera. Would you like to hear? he said.

I nodded, and with forefinger and thumb he revolved the metal crank on the side of the box. A mounted cylinder inside rotated on its axle and metal studs pressed through the mechanism’s comb, plucking the hard reverberant tines as the man accelerated his tempo. I recognized the melody as one my mother sang to me as a child. Afraid to sleep, she would sit next to me in the bed, humming over and over her hypnotic spell until I gave in to rest. Now, that hymn’s counterpoints reached out to embrace and draw me near.

With his eyes closed, the man gazed toward the sky, the golden spool turning in its chassis. Fully entangled, as if by the tendrils of some deep sea creature, my mother’s voice once again coaxed me toward sleep, carrying me down into whatever vastness lay beyond those turning gears, the metal tinkling fading above as the world I knew slipped away.

The tall man closed the box. He placed his hands upon the lid and opened his eyes. He smiled. An afternoon breeze spilled between and warmed the wind-softened headstones, whistling through the grasses as the man sat and waited.

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