growing_old kerry her eyes are acid green and her hair is black corkscrew curls barely contained. tattoos on her chest, shoulders, fingers. eyelashes and lips like a doll. doc martens busted at the toes. just looking at her, passing on the street or riding silently on the train, you'd never know how soft she actually is. she told me about the catholic funeral. open casket--his face looked like rubber. i think of my grandfather's embalmed body; i was seven. his cheeks were flushed like he'd just come in from the cold. i think of rodney's funeral, july in louisiana, the air full of gnats, the catholic church dim and drenched in pointless ritual, all his daughters crying, huddled together like crows on a branch. she said the funeral made her think about her own father, and then made her think about death in a way she hadn't for years. even in middle school she never actually thought she'd get old. sometimes i forget how young she is, and then she looks up at me those acid green eyes and i remember. a lot of life packed into only a few years. i know this feeling. i had that realization too, also fresh out of the hospital, also bewildered. but i'd had a childhood. i know what it's like to lose years other people enjoyed, get spat out into the rush and the noise wondering not who but when am i? last night i asked him how he wanted to die and he didn't miss a beat. "in a sword fight against my mortal enemy." there is a cliff in my future. i do not know where it is. i imagine an endless blue ocean, grass that stops abruptly at the earth's edge like sliced carpet. it will be like taking a deep breath of the cleanest air, like breathing for the first time. 230619 what's it to you? who go blather from