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We stood in a circle above you, each facing inward. With linked hands we held ourselves together on the outside. Nothing but the machines touched you at blunted angles. Professional hands suspended, your body left to chill under a blanket of ice. Their technical words useless, infected blood transmitted the shock:
parts of you unknown to us had already given up. Certain things I can remember, like the mess of tubes poked in and out of you, vibrating with a twisted hum. The hiss of the ventilator as it mocked our choked whispers. A breathy tune carried through to a crooked end. Hope sucked from the air, my mind held by
its own superstitions. Around the circle we offered stories, but the details tangle. Never the same. When the turn came to me I don’t know what I forced out, if anything at all.
The hearing is always last to go, or so they told me. But the skin retained your empty body, a sheet of white to confine decayed, exhausted parts. I imagined peeling it off you to carry away in my pocket. Layer by layer I’d restore the color with strings of words that escaped.
They mailed us paperwork a few weeks later stating how, as they claim, you expired. But their facts incomplete, the cause barely implied. I still trace on sheets of my own to arrange some sense. Yet moments fracture, the words swing and slip away uncontained. Vital parts always missing, whether mine to lose or
yours I’m unsure. |