Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

There are places where the air feels different—not heavier, exactly, just more awake. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is one of those places. The stone sits clean and bright against a muted sky, and everything around it seems to lower its voice.

A lone sentinel moves with a practiced stillness, each step measured, each turn exact. It isn’t performance. It’s repetition turned into devotion. The ceremony is simple enough to describe, but harder to explain: a small set of motions that somehow holds an enormous amount of meaning.

Standing there, I kept noticing the quiet details—the wreaths laid out on the pale ground, the broad openness of Arlington, the winter-bare trees, and beyond them the distant shape of the city. It’s strange how far you can see from that hill, and how close it all feels at the same time.

I thought about names you never learn, stories that don’t come with neat endings, and families who carried an absence home. The tomb doesn’t try to answer any of that. It just marks it. It keeps watch.

The changing of the guard asks for your attention, and then it teaches you what to do with it: stand still, listen, remember—without needing to make it about yourself.