life brings death

I remember the death rattle and everything that happened in that room before and after.

When I was a little girl, the wallpaper. The dress-up drawer, hiding in the closet, the opening and closing of a music box. The ouiji board, god it scared the shit out of me. Cold and wet from the swimming pool, dripping in the kitchen.  Popsicles.

Then the hospital bed, the red lipstick over parched lips. The morphine injections and the subsequent urgency to remove clothing, the sagging breasts. The face-lift scar. Gold, emeralds, diamonds on every finger and every toe. The light filtered through shutters over wrinkled skin. That prayer. The smell of lilies. Fingers over eyelids. A man carrying away a corpse.