An End

And what of the funerals of intimates? Ever since I sat through my first loss, the end has plagued me like an aftertaste, always ghosting around the back of my thoughts. But what of the day when I wake up in a place I no longer recognize, for tacky furniture I didn't pick out, for women in white whisking me away in a chair (when did I forget how to walk?) to dining halls with gaunt faced strangers who barely speak a word. Instead, they gape, mouth half open, their minds fixed on something I cannot see.

And when the masked nurses wheel me back to that unfamiliar room with pictures of my children, their children, their children, she drives the happy needle into my ivory, sagging skin pulling me closer to a sweet oblivion of forgetfulness.

I don't want to forget, but I've already forgotten what I wanted so desperately to remember. It's all going. I'm going.