Death Wears Soft Skin

"Where do people go when they die, mommy?"

Her hazel eyes looked up in earnest

Mom was busy looking for ripe fruit

I smelled my grandfathers stale breath.

His tuna fish lip corners moved in the grasshopper hum of my childhood.

I looked back at the little girl,

Dwarfed by her mother and rows of apples, oranges and plums

Which glowed with a luminosity nature never intended

I didn't need to wait to hear what mommy might say

When I saw death, it was thin purple skin and the caustic scent of antiseptics

It was the sharp prick of loss in my virgin belly

A box of apricots fell from my cart,

Sending their velvet bodies an arms length under wooden display cases.

I saw them roll and tumble across boardwalk planks of a long-ago beach vacation

Each fruit creating its own dull tone.

That was where it had all begun

It was there that the blue and fragile bone of my grandfather cracked on wooden board and nail

That day eight years ago…

I rubbed my eyes and pushed my thoughts backwards.

In his last days, I could recall, my parents often visited him

Too scared to see pain, I would stay home.

Tortured by my imagination, I saw them walk down a gauntlet

of hospital hallway repetition, passing one uniform pain after another.

I would grip my pillow tightly when they finally arrived, where a bed writhed in sheeted agony, where old bones were taught under dry skin, where weak hands quivered.

I could almost feel my own veins pulse weakly over atrophied muscles.

But when mom came home she would scoop me up

Her lap a safe haven, warm and smelling of lanolin and almonds.

I always tried to conjure up the arthritic old man's face

But it was lost, hidden behind pills and promises and the fear of moving on

I stood up, remembering I was at work

One apricot laid there, by itself, a gash along one side.

I picked it up carefully, laying it to rest along side many others

I wondered if their bruised bodies could feel the cold bite of the steel counter

In the end, I put them to rest on a white plate,

Away from searching hands and hungry mouths.