Denmark’s cemeteries are manicured and inviting. Each one I’ve seen has been cordoned by hedges, which I compare to the sprawling, hilly cemeteries back home. I learned how to drive in graveyards like that, paved with asphalt, lacking in benches and shade. I remember looking across the rows of headstones while standing at my grandfather’s grave in Missouri, and seeing another family visiting a loved one in the distance. Where I sit now feels remarkably private in comparison. 

The howls of wood pigeons bounce off of apartment buildings and above the trees of the cemetery I sit in now, which is directly behind my apartment complex. In front of me are two Japanese maple trees, each beside a headstone. The shorter one has rich, purple-red leaves with five lobes. Sunlight filters through the leaves of the taller, which shift from green to red to purple. Across the Atlantic Ocean, a Japanese maple stands in my front yard at home. I imagine it as it was last Christmas, the last time I was home, branches stretched to the sky, coated with a healthy layer of snow. I wonder how this cemetery will change as winter approaches Denmark, how it will feel when the hedge walls are bare enough to see through. Or perhaps, like the maple at home, a new wall will be formed of snow and branch alone. I wonder how I will look back on these first few weeks of swimming in the blue harbors and watching the sweat roll off my arms in the Metro. I wonder if the winter will feel as new to me as these last days of summer did.