Creative Writing
English doesn’t breathe anymore. It was lowered six feet under an unmarked tombstone on a humid day. The petals of wreaths of roses sagged in the weight of the air. Nobody cried, no obituary was published.
The next day, pale, bug eyed men down in Silicon Valley adjust their turtlenecks or tighten their ties, and everybody round the world salutes them. The bug eyed men wash their hands of the blood of yesterday's victim without knowing that they are the murderer.
Everybody wants to die in his sleep. They say it is the most rapid, painless way to pass. A lady in my building died in her sleep. Nobody found her until a few days later when she was bloated and covered in the contents of her colostomy bag. She’ll never know that– she went quick. But imagine a slow and brutal death. A blow to the head every day for twenty years. Each day the world grows a bit more foreign and fuzzy, each day the throb of the temples more severe. On the final day, a humid one, one last blow is delivered. The organs wind down. The heart grows lethargic. The brain stops its function. Searing stabs all over, until eventually the eyelids grow tired. The petals of roses sag in the weight of the air.
Resuscitation is impossible. Once somebody is pronounced deceased, tears well the eyes and the florist makes money. The departed does not wake up a week after the ink on the death certificate is dried. I am not a man with long hair and a white robe, I cannot resurrect the victim under the unmarked tombstone. However I sob for her, I wear black and cover my mirrors, uttering Kaddish to the air in my presence. I know her story, her flourishes and struggles.