Cameo, Curtain, Shoes

  She often thought

  that to be absolved

  into obliviously bright light

  or perfect, obsidian black

  would be her idea

  of both heaven and hell.

  Unlike most people

  she knew, she thought

  of them as nearly the same.

  To her, they were

  as inseparable as

  inhaling and exhaling.

  If death is the absence

  of breath,

  then, she weighed,

  what comes beyond that

  must be the terrible, sweet ache

  of lightheadedness.

  The pictures on her walls

  were nearly as blank as the paint.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  One favorite,

  a photograph entitled

  Weather Conditions, Antarctica,

  was a blur of white.

  In it, wisps of snow streaked

  along the bottom

  and seemed to slip under the frame.

  When she herself paled and greyed,

  she thought life was the borrowed brightness

  of the moon and that death

  was the darkness behind it.

  But she hoped,

  she hoped

  that it was more

  like a velvet curtain

  full with soft-bosom folds

  and that death was the person

  you most loved, hiding

  visibly behind them,

  betrayed by a pair of

  familiar, telltale shoes.

  -Kat Isacson