The Death

That smell. Not of death, but of the antiseptic bleach smell that pervades the nostrils from the time your feet step from the elevator. Here you do not smell the weeping wounds of pus or drainage from every body orifice. You smell only the shocking smell of fresh clean linens and clean floors that attempt to hide the decay of flesh. Sometimes you wonder what is worse.

You walk down the hall and each step is highlighted by the beeps and alarms from rooms closed off so as to not allow anything to escape. It is a steady cadence of heartbeats, some too fast, some too slow. Some not at all.

You finally get to that number on the door. That is life. In the beginning, you are given numbers for your weight, your length. People rejoice. But in the end, you are a number on a cheap plastic sign.

You enter. People whisper in hushed tones, both reverent and borderline obscene. Lights are dimmed. For what? Is everyone fearful to see reality? Are the dimmed lights for the living or for the dead?

You approach. The figure on the bed is posed, hands crossed across the chest. Lines removed but the bandages over open wounds tell the story. The body is still. An empty piece of flesh.

You place your hand over cold fingers, willing then to grasp one more time. But life, like the rain, eventually stops. And sometimes it enriches the soil and sometimes it leaves floods in its wake.

You sigh and hope as you look down at what was once your body, that your rain enriched.