vegetable ovenbird The party is for you, though calling it a “party” barely begins to encompass the truth of it. She’s in the kitchen preparing trays of snacks—cut vegetables and hummus, chips and dip, a charcuterie board–but her heart isn’t in it. She’s not sure she’ll ever be hungry again. As she’s cutting carrots into anorexic sticks you appear in the doorway looking ghostly and confused. You trip over your left foot as though you’ve forgotten about this particular appendage and its point of attachment at the ankle. She hears the uneven clatter of your gait, but doesn’t look up. The knife keeps hitting the cutting board and I hear the rage transferring from the blade to the oiled bamboo surface. “Go back to bed,” she says sharply, the way an exhausted mother might talk to a child who has emerged from his room after midnight for a third glass of water. Your face crumples. You hold your left hand in your right, cradling it like a broken bird. Your white t-shirt is tangled, with only one arm passing through its respective sleeve. Your eyes scan for clues that will tell you where you are, but they miss so much these days that you can’t puzzle it out. Your mouth opens, then closes, the question travelling to your lips evaporating before it can take the form of words. You turn, haltingly, stumble back to bed, collapse onto white starched sheets and pull them to your chin so you look like a cadaver laid out for dissection. The door to your room is half open and I watch people come and go, perching on the edge of the bed to hold your hand. Your eyes are closed, but tears leak out the corners. Everyone has come to say goodbye and to eat bruschetta off paper plates. You find you’re not ready for this, though living doesn’t feel like an option. “Vegetable,” they say. That’s the future waiting for you. You imagine yourself as a broccoli floret, limp and bland and tasteless, little green flecks of consciousness falling into the sheets. Your wordless crying rises into a keen. From the kitchen she sighs with exasperation. “Just get a grip already!” she shouts and throws cherry tomatoes into a bowl. She’s so tired of all this leaving that never seems to end. She wants it to be over. She had no idea dying could take so long. I wait for my turn to enter the white expanse of your room. We are mourners approaching a coffin containing a living, breathing corpse. I don’t know what I’ll say once the papery rasp of your hand is in mine. Maybe I’ll just sing: My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away In the end… 260507 what's it to you? who go blather from