Waiting To Be Made

I have, before now, said whatever I liked in front of people who are dying. Mostly when I was a child. My logic, that first time, was that it simply didn't matter.

Knowledge mushroomed out over my head. I could tell my father secrets, nonsense, lies, because his breath was already percussion and saliva spilling from the corners of his mouth. I couldn't get caught. He couldn't tell me off.

After that it became fixed as a natural order of these things. I could give people a dream. A whisper - an interesting last thought as synapses spiralled away. As a teenager I wanted to be a nurse so I could speak to the wheezing, the slipping, the weakening, every single day of my life. Tell them what they wanted to hear. What they didn't want to hear. What they had never heard before, during their lives. Alive, dying, dead, is a lie. It is one fluid motion. Rarely is one stage entirely separate from another.

I didn't though. Become a nurse. Science has always been a struggle for me, in a way I don't even understand. I ended up a receptionist in a hotel, in a city, working a night shift. Recently I've been bringing my laptop and playing internet backgammon on their wireless. I have beaten Rob50, ObiWan and shylovepixie in the last week.

The second person that I saw stop breathing was my grandmother. We were not alone, the room was full of relatives and priests, and at the moment her eyes slipped to the side and she became limp everyone let out a collective gasp. But earlier that day, quieter, shut in the neat room away from the blowy morning, I had been lucky. Auntie Jill went to make a phone call. I cried then, understanding inevitibility, knowing she was waiting to be made into just a body. And there we were, bedridden and blanket-side. She trusted me and I had always thought she was wise. I nearly blurted out, I'm pregnant, but caught myself in time, disgusted. Told her some truth about myself. I didn't believe in God. I'd lost my virginity before I legally came of age. I'd tried pot a couple of times. I loved her very much.

I want, really, to be able to carry on like that. Tell you a story. But this is the first time I've seen you in months. I haven't even known you since we were little.

I try: to talk, but it sounds wrong. Lopsided, diagonal speech, so I talk inside my head to you.

The scarf you have around your neck does not at all match your ball-dress, jewellery, tiara. I suspect it is to cover bruising, blood, damaged tissues. Your feet look badly strange, very unnnatural, fallen apart under the blanket and shoeless with toe peaks. Who would go barefoot in a ball-dress?

People have said to me that you look just like you're sleeping. You don't. Your flesh is greying and sinking, bagging around your jawline. Gravity is teasing you, sweetheart.

And I really want to touch you. Your hand is right in front of me. Does your hair feel different? Do you smell different? This is a first time for both of us.

I settle for touching your hand, expecting it to be as cold as cliches. The plasticine shock when I touch with a finger is not at how cold, but how cold because dead.