Unrest
By: Jamie Moore

Even dying didn’t make her happy,
though she went to great lengths to accomplish it.
Her anger clung to her corpse,
apparent from the moment
when moving her heavier-than-should-be body
from the gurney to my table
my hand, caught beneath her,
pulled against the cold porcelain.
The blood blister was a grand thing.
It throbbed the whole time I worked.
 
She fought the process
harder than someone dead should;
refusing to let the fluid in
and forcing it out where it should not have leaked.
She swelled.
Of course she did.
Stealing from her family
the illusion that she was only sleeping.
 
Her multitude of cuts
required nearly an hour of stitching.
No tidy sliced wrists for her.
I smoothed wax over the sutures
and carefully blended makeup to hide the sheen.
She looked good when I was finished,
for a swollen, dead lady.
 
As I lowered her
into her casket, pretty and trimmed with lace,
she lashed out at me one last time,
slamming the lid on my head
and adding my blood
where I had washed hers away.
She left me with scars,
tokens for what I took from her.