by PW Cooper
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There's a line of Dickens' in Tale of Two Cities she thinks about a room so dark and miserable and gloomy that the candlelight seems buried in the wood of the walls and the table she doesn't recall it exactly but the image has been stuck in her head since she first read the book when she was a girl she used to close her eyes and imagine flickering lights deep beneath hard surfaces lights dim lights that could not be extinguished could not be snuffed out. The lights of the funeral home are dimly reflected in the polished surface of a dark mahogany coffin untouchable somehow looking incorruptible and pure in the darkness. On the desk across the room there is a bowl of old candy all those sweet things wrapped in bright plastic flashing and glittering like trash metal. She turns away from the coffin she wanders aimlessly about the showroom looking at this box and then that one touching the soft velvet interiors and stroking the hardwood covers fingering the brassy hinges. People didn't really rest they just die just rot away she has always believed that never believed in any god of resurrection and life when you were dead you were just that. DC may have believed different that didn't change reality he was gone and could not be called back still she wanted to think that maybe he would know it if she buried him in something comfortable to die in dying and dying again and again until the end of time consciousness like a tide lapping on the pulverized white sand of a lifeless beach don't wait for me you bastard how can you do this thank god you're gone. She cannot stand to look at the mahogany coffin it reminds her of her childhood of her girl self buried under the years crushed down to a memory that could have been of another person's life she points at another box any other box and says that she will take it.