This is one of the macabre ones

[rozk]

Withering

In the first year, the flesh dried on her bones
Some insects hatched from eggs and tore their way
out through her skin. And then they flew away
leaving her lonely. Purple, green, the tones

that mould laid on her slowly moulting skin
faded to dust. Her fluids leaked to dry,
a moth turned paper lying on one eye.
Her beauty changed. Not as she once had been

ripe as a grape – now the wine press debris
that death makes of us all. Yet in her case
honed fineness in the wreckage of her face.
Fragments of skin, white bone, a vacancy

where once her eyes were bright before she died.
Transformed, transfigured. Also mummified.

Comments

[crowleycrow.livejournal.com]

Elegant -- and elegant writing about death is a blow against death (which of course wins anyway). If you haven't, you should read Jim Crace's novel "Being Dead," which bears the same import.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - the Crace was one of the things I had in mind, along with a news story about a woman who had a lot of friends but had lost touch with them and whose corpse was not found for three years...

[crazycrone.livejournal.com]

Everyone seems to have been spooked by that article. I keep thinking of it. Brrrr...