RIP

Nobody talks to the dead. Laying inanimate on the table, their body filled with embalming fluids, stiff and silent, they never complain. Looking down upon the face of a pale woman, The mortician compartmentalizes. She takes a deep breath, mentally blowing out candles but the image stays the same. Her mother lays dead. She knew this would come, her mother requested it, she asked for her daughter to do what she did best but the sagging skin, the lack of blood, she looked as if someone had rung her out to dry. The girl pressed on, she pulled out her mother's makeup, running a hand along the plastic case, grounding herself. This was her element, She'd be her masterpiece.

So she began, rouge on the cheeks of her beloved, plucking eyebrow hairs and drawing on lipstick. Through the process tears would spring and bite at her eyes, she couldn't help but think back to her mother's life as she faced her death. Mom's beauty, her pain.