The Morgue

being dead isn't easy, neither is being alive. but being alive means having a chance to make it easy, or at least better.

I visit the morgue with the idea of saying goodbye

I decide that my life is complete

Not complete in "I've done everything I've wanted to do"

But complete in "I have nowhere else to go"

I am brought to a room where the deceased are drained of bodily fluids

There's blood on the ground

I imagine being the body

Sprawled across the table

With my mother beside me

Crying and begging and wheezing

And then I am the mortician

"She is gone," I say, "She is never coming back."

A sentence that cannot be processed by a grieving parent

How do you mourn a child?

How do you go on living knowing you outlived them?

How is that justice?

How can I sit here and pretend that being dead will be easy?

I visit the morgue because visiting it is better than being it

I am not a body

I am not dead

I am alive and it scares me.