Enough

I'm holding on to secrets so tightly my hands start to burn.


Winter has come full-force, wind sending the windows quivering against their panes and snow blanketing the Earth in an ivory sheen.  We're all bundled up inside, pressed together for warmth to maybe give a bit of it to the not-still-living locked up in a metallic casket no bigger than a shoe box. The mix of flowers –yellow roses, her favorite– and the musty smell of the funeral home permeates everything, makes my nose crinkle up and eyes sting, spilling over with tears.


The sea of nameless, faceless acquaintances part as I walk forward, cold hands on my back and muted, guilty I'm sorrys assaulting my ears, prolonging my mission. I meet the table, watch my Aunt sniffle and move on her way, pausing to wipe her tears on my shoulder and hug me tight.


I take my turn, all eyes on me. They know,
they know.


Her face stares back at me, a dozen pressed beneath glass, her hair in a bob the color of driftwood and wheat fields, eyes the color of molten molasses. She smiles at me, thirty-two seashells in a perfect row, and–


Her skin melts, turns sallow. Her eyes bleed, lifeless, and the sound of vomit hitting the toilet bowl and pained moans fill my ears. Heart monitors blare and respirators scream. My picture-Mother's jaw wretches open, head tilts and body swells, arthritic. She is dead. Ashes. Particles of dust and bone shards.


I grip the table, the glass cool under my fingers, lightheaded.


"I'm sorry," I whisper to her, "I never told you. You knew- you knew. I'm sorry."


My picture-Mother's heads shake and straighten, jowls righting themselves to poised smiles. The room is once again silent, the murmur of side conversations dabbled with oh, she was so youngs and I wish I could have said goodbyes the only sound in the room. But she's still here. We're still here. She's still dead.


I press my hands into the hem of my dress and swear I can smell the burn of fabric from the blistering heat on my fingertips, the lies and deceit boiling up through my pores. I feel someone come up beside me. My Father. He touches my shoulder, slides his fingers over the bump of my collarbone and back along the jut of my shoulder blade.  He feels my spine, silently counts the vertebrae and sighs. He knows. She knew.


He guides me away, and I can feel their eyes on me. On my dress, too loose and shapeless. On my legs, the bones of my knees jutting out through my stockings. On my hair, its fine fibers trailing behind me, snapping loose from my skull.


The number flashes through my mind: eighty five. I was eighty five the day she died, eighty four today. I will be eighty two by the New Year, seventy nine by the end of January. I will be dead by the end of Summer, at least sixty even. I will see her again. I will be happy.


It does not occur to me that everyone would be back here, without me. That the room would be full of fading flowers again and the same box would be up there, full of Jessica-specks and Jessica-fragments– or maybe a casket, closed, because no one would want to look at me. It does not occur to me that this time everyone would be crying, because two deaths in one family in one year is too much. It does not occur to me that there would be plenty of crying beforehand.


All I know is that she is dead and I am not, that I am too big, too much, too alive. I know that my stomach is empty and my head is foggy and my bones hurt and my heart hurts and my lungs hurt. I hurt.


I know that I am dying, and that is enough.