V. Take pills

Her breathing is heavy, it comes slowly like the air is mercury, uneven, using all her energy. Blankets have melded into her; their quilted stitches have stitched themselves into her lids, and they travel, like insects looping through undense air, the stitches form themselves first on her body and then on her eyelids. In the distance a door slams. The looping both gives her a visual focus which gives her something to do and agitates her stomach. Which is empty but still rejects its phantom contents. Her eyes stay closed. She wants to disappear into sleep. On the coffee table are an empty aspirin bottle and water glasses. There is more warmth nearby, wet red warmth on her forehead, and then it is gone. Her consciousness is a watery furnace. She has only seen red for days.

VI. Dear

‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said, lying in fluffy repose, her kindness having earned her a bed near the window, from the nurses who were kind to her indeed. The word came like baby’s breath, like the space between words, but it was all she could do; it could have been an accidental union of her teeth to lower lip. Vee knew it was her name. ‘Nan?’ she’d said, her hand gripping Nan’s as tightly as she could without shattering it. ‘I’m here, Nan.’ Her grandmother’s hair was as thin as a spider web. Her skin looked ready to dissolve into dust. ‘I’m listening.’ Her grandmother had been in hospice for a month. She weighed less than seventy pounds and had not opened her eyes in a week. Vee leaned closer.

‘Let me out…here,’ her grandmother said.