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Disintegrate

I imagined my body decaying and melting into the carpet. My mind recalled the phenomenon after death when the deceased’s blood settles, a patchy mottling of skin, causing a horrifying yet beautiful discoloration.  Death’s kiss-- bruised purples and pinks, a farewell firing sunset fanning out on corpse. I pictured my flesh speckled and unfashionably pale

My own romantic tendencies had me barring the more grotesque aspects of decay. There’d be no bloating, no stench. I’d be a body, sprawled perhaps, but in a slumbered position. For an instant, I imagined the gore, my skin flayed and cackled, peeling and dehydrated, rotten and raw, but the ugliness of it was searing.

I visualized my face. Muscles relax after death, and eyeballs tend to sink back into sockets. Eyelids creep open. Would my eyes would be open, looking without seeing as they so often did in life? I thought of a dead fish floating in the river, washing up on shore. I could see its glassy eyes, receding and decaying slowly. Eyes, which were never a window to anything, but rather a clump of very useful cells, open as though aware.

Would someone lay coins on my eyelids? I imagined stitches sewing my eyes in a grotesque manner perhaps more suited for a horror film.

I told myself to shut up and I smoked a cigarette. I went to bed that night, and visions of fish and decay and death’s kiss haunted me.

snippet

I’d almost reached my destination when  something snapped and I began to fall backwards, not unlike a wounded bird falling from the sky. I was falling faster. I imagined the sounds a ghost would make as it fell and realized that I was nearing the bottom. I startled awake in bed, my breath caught in my throat. 


*small thing I wrote for another story that didn't really fit in with the rest of it. 

smother

I light a candle and watch the flames. I hold my hand above the orange; it’s so beautiful, and I want that. I want to be beautiful and warm. It burns, but it focuses me. I am centered. My hand aches and my eyes tear up, but I hold my hand closer still. Screaming seems melodramatic; most things about myself seem to be these days. I hear the rain outside and my record player inside; it’s beautiful. I am a part of this; I am connected to this fire. It burns me, licks me, dances inside of me, warms my frigid core. My hand is raw, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, of pride. I've been strong. I understand the fire. Beautiful, destructive, and fragile.

My hand is too close to the fire, and I accidentally smother the flame. The dark thoughts cloud my mind.

hot coffee

I take a sip of my coffee; it's gone stagnant and just above warm, but I swallow it anyhow. I can drink my coffee black when it's piping hot, but anything less than scalding has me choking on the sludge. Funny how a hot nectar can be a warm sludge and a cold poison..

I am frigid and cold inside, cool blood coursing through a cooler body. My flesh is pale and tinged with blue, and I paint my nails to cover the sickly beds beneath them. I emit no heat and am always shivering, bundled in sweaters and seeking an unseen warmth. I buy used clothing, oversized cardigans. I burrow into the warm memories of previous owners, but I can never quite seem to make their memories my own.

I need my coffee so it burns, so I can drink it and hope that the warmth can disperse, that my heart isn't just a morbid diathesis of predisposed sickness, too ill and cold to pump.

I breathe in, breathe out, and watch a single puff of breath leave my mouth. It's winter, and the trees are so bare.

I get up and go to microwave the coffee; there's still some remaining in the pot, but my mother's voice rings through my mind--- something something wasteful, and so I can't bring myself to pour it out. If I want to drink a fresh cup, I have to drink this cup first. I smile briefly when I think of my mother, but then I frown that, here I am, twenty-two and obliging myself to rules that used to make me cringe. That being said, I still follow them. I quickly down the coffee, fresh from the microwave, and grimace. Looking at my watch I see that, yes, it's nearly seven and I poured this cup at six.

A fresh cup. Fresh, hot, soul-warming coffee.