SUFFOCATING ANGEL.
You find it hard to get used to the smell of the room where her body is laid out on the table with a white cloth covering her lower half out of some odd sense of modesty now that she’s dead and unaware of any impropriety that her naked corpse may have to those in the room who share the same view as you but it is the smell that clings to your nose the hygienic smell of hospitals or clinics not the smell of her or her flesh which still retains elements of her perfume and dried sweat and as you lean closer to her cheek you feel the desire to kiss her cheek but you refrain and hold yourself in check as if it wasn’t your daughter laying there but some other’s fourteen year old child someone else’s daughter laying there suffocated with no marks on body or face unmarked the doctor had informed not a blemish and you place a hand on her undeveloped breast wishing to feel a heartbeat wanting her to suddenly open her eyes and sit up and smile and cross her arms and hands over her nakedness and blush but she doesn’t she just lays there still and white and pale and silent her lips sealed yet having a slight pout as if annoyed by something and her eyes closed as if pennies had been placed there to seal and you hear a nurse whisper by your shoulder who would do such a thing and such an angel too yes such an angel indeed such innocence and who ah yes who and you need no word to inform of that he did it he whom you both trusted he whom you once had married and who had father the child and wanted to have for the weekend just for a short stay he had said just a short stay and that was it the last time the last stay the final time you had dropped her off for his weekend and maybe he had planned it all along this weekend this final goodbye this taking away this murder of his own so that you could not have her back if he couldn’t and then to hang himself from the stairs leaving her lying suffocated on the bed with a pillow thrust down on her head and there is movement beside you as a nurse draws down the cloth to reveal her lower frame and flesh the paleness of her the thinness the purity of skin and had she been naked like this when found? you had asked on entering the room some short time ago and yes they had replied just so and had he? no no nothing touched no sign of anything untoward the doctor has said urgently seeing your face and eyes light up and you sigh and touch her hand lying beside her body motionless the nails trimmed neat the hand turned slightly inward and you rub your skin on her hers as if you wished to disturb her sleep wished for the impossible wished for her to grip your hand and squeeze but she doesn’t the hand is still and cold and does not grip or grab or hold and what would she have felt you wonder but do not ask and what would her last thoughts have been what last sights seen or memories held? The questions come thick and fast and no one to give answers no answers none just the dumb silence the suffocation of an angel your angel your child your little girl.
