While I'm sometimes unsure whether you have an overarching plot with this piece, you've got a very good sense of character. Your descriptions of John's psyche make up for the problems with the structure, and I'm sure you can clean that up in editing.

Great story. It flows very well, and you really made me connect and sympathize with John. If this is any indication of what you have to offer, I can't wait to read more of your work. -Ichaerus

Nostalgic and sweet.
Simple and smooth.

Above all, in this story the focus is the character John, who has an amazing amount of characterisation about him that I feel like he is one of the most believable people I've read about recently. I'm not sure just what is going on with the cemetary, but it adds to the feeling that John is not normal. He's strange. Odd. I think the passage where you described the neighbours of his was an interesting one: they all are overly nice to him, treating him as a simpleton, while the young girl next door is mute and also shy around him.

So...yeah. I like where this is going and I love the characterisation you've got going on.

This is a very good story, you've got here...though it seems as if there's a lot more to it (John's accident, the exact meaning of the title, et cetera.) It reads like a modern iteration of something from the romantic movement: specifically, the attention paid to the natural world, even the "urban nature" of the surroundings, the emphasis on emotion, the idealization of childhood, and the like.

I wonder about a few of the stylistic things you did here, though many of them are simply my own prejudices. I think that the adverbs (fairly, brightly, et cetera) you're using don't necessarily add anything to the prose; certain ones can be changed to adjectives ("The grass was so brightly green that it seemed likely to melt." could become "The grass was such a bright green that it almost seemed to melt.") I'm also a little bugged by placing a character's quotations in the middle or end of a paragraph; just a mechanical thing.

That being said, there are many beautiful things you did with the prose--I especially enjoy the phrase "dark, grapevine ringlets"; it manages to be original and clear as to what you're describing.

I like the characterization of John and the opening sentence; there's something of the byronic hero to him, but you manage to do it without making him seem anachronistic, it's wonderful. Keep doing that.