Dancing with Death

The quiet dancer in the blue sequined dress laid like a corpse in the person size indentation in the concrete. Assistants walked from room to room in the outdoor indoor house pushing a microwave sized speaker to each locale. When the music started, she rolled out, landing gently on the smooth rocks that served as footpath and drainage. Then she scrabbled the stones toward her, the clatter defining her argument with death. Nothing is ever the same when your loved one is gone. We become unmoored, slowly spiraling, like the dancer, pulled into our own intestines by the sudden blinding pain. Poom! Arms out, fingers splayed, then concave again, pulled inward, like her essential organs need protecting. She is Grief, and she is Recovery. It’s like our short lived pets should prepare us for the ephemeral nature of life, but their passings don’t really. We lay, like the dancer, in coffins with only three walls, trying to understand the random cruelty, and unexpected robberies, the takings. I would scream soundlessly and threaten the gods, those pernicious creatures, all while abandoning my forebears’ blind faith in only one god, who works in mysterious ways, none of which include immortality.