15

DISSOLUTION

⸻

we stretch worn paper skin over her brittle bones.

and where raven hair had fallen off,

we put a small, bald skull

to cover the brain

the way we encased her

lungs and soul in the rib cages,

so we don't have to look at her

mind choking on its last breaths,

while epithelial cells bloom

and flood the tissues, suffocating and

crowding its way out of the bones,

the ribs.

out of the flesh and skin

trapping it within.

science reduces her into something

misshaped, and wrong.

sometimes, if she's awake enough,

she'd smile up at us.

the positive grin warps her sunken, hollow features.

she'd say: think of death as a fresh start.

like how bleeding hearts by her bedside

fall apart.

And it's the same smile she gives to

nurses stabbing a needle up her twig-like forearms;

to doctors declaring her recurred lung cancer

in a flat sympathetic tone;

to bankers, to insurance representatives who

stopped by her deathbed to hand her

a financial debt slip

of her husband's failing business.

the nice ones always die first.

it's gods' last act of malice,

or mercy, for the beautiful souls they love.

if we can kill her ourselves, we would.

watching the mass of a mortal miracle

being whittled away by god's invisible hands

is as hard as staring at the existence of a skeleton

kept alive on carbon dioxide of human hubris.

but she's our everything,

and we're not gods, just hopelessly hopeful creatures,

praying for a frail trail of life that's not our own.

so we leave the machines grumbling

throughout the night,

let the monotonous droning lull us to sleep.

even though we hadn't been able to fall asleep.

even though the mechanical noise

of a heart monitor, of an iv drip

aren't any better than the

guttural gurgles

of chemical buzzing in her bloodstream,

of radiation greedily rotted the meat inside out.

the sound of scrubs and needles permeated

underneath rapid, shortening gasps,

sharp, like reeking disinfectants,

entwines and splices a line up our spines.

splitting us open the longer we close our eyes,

pretending to be asleep,

pretending to prepare for

the final daylight, dredging

empty exhales and flatline heartbeats

for bleary memories of a figure undistorted

either by god or by hands of anonymous strangers,

slinging her tiny body off the cold hospital bed

into a coffin a size too big.

we can cry for her,

can curse gods for making an unfair choice

as red fire hungrily devoured the wood,

turning everything into black ash.

instead, we watch dirt and sunlight and water droplets

slide down the sides of her polished gravemarker

and think about how she died:

brows pinched,

mouth slackened, still half upturned,

like the briefest second before she was awake,

before she remembers she needs to smile.