at cruel angles . Shelby x Mekhi

If the funeral is open casket, I’m not going.

The instant the words had come out of my mouth, regret found its way in, filling the space in the back of my throat until I was sure my demise would be one of drowning. The room was small, cramped, and occupied by three people whose names I did not remember from the brief introduction they had made only moments earlier. When I walked in, I was determined to establish my authority regarding these arrangements, but hearing the words bounce from the mirror across the room to my skull and back again, I was confident the only initiative accomplished was making myself look like a fucking asshole. It only made matters worse that they didn’t seem the least bit offended. The woman reached across the table and laid her delicate, bony hand on top of mine, covering the trembling, nail bitten fingers. We can certainly discuss that, Shelby.

Why this was the one place in the Capitol didn’t offer a complimentary drink, I do not know.

She must have known that the smile that followed was forced, but she allowed me to remove my hand from underneath hers, and from there, I assume the discussion that followed was as standard and uneventful as any other planning of a funeral.

After stepping out from white tile to asphalt, I stared straight into the bright sky of summer, the sun causing the tears racing down my cheeks to grind to a halt and stick uncomfortably through the means of sweat and salt. I should start packing my bags for Eight. The words, whispered and directed at no person in particular, seemed unreal, as though the ideas of travel and belongings and homeland had no objective correlative. I have to start packing my bags for Eight.

It took me fifteen minutes to unroot myself from that spot, and those were only the moments that I counted.

*

Arriving in Eight a decade after my victory in order to attend my mother’s funeral feels appropriate at best and darkly comedic at worst. I’m walked past the demolished structure of the textile mill and shown the broken pieces of debris, partly for the PR and partly by request. I know that my mother’s body is cushioned somewhere nearby in white satin, the casket surrounding her built from the thick wood of the oak that stood in front of my childhood home. This request had undoubtedly inconvenienced numerous people, but enough foot stomping in the Capitol can make just about anything happen. Despite knowing all of this, I find myself walking through the debris to spot the stains of blood and leftover bones in order to point to one, think, that must have been her. All of this footwork in order to attach some type of physicality to a loss I cannot yet understand.

From the back of the hall, I see her coffin at the front of the room, stately and perfectly centered. From where I stand, it looks ephemeral, as if I walked up now to run my fingers along the whorls of oak, everything would disappear the second my skin made contact. How different from the shabby, misaligned box my sister’s body was returned in. The one night before her short, poorly attended funeral, I slept beside the casket, my fingers gripping the cracks in the soft pine until my knuckles were ghastly and splintered.

I have no desire for such a display of grief now. Instead, I want to wrest this black dress from my body, show the crowd currently gathered the way my ribs cave when I am brash enough to pursue a full breath of air. A selfish act, undoubtedly, but a momentary one as well. I want this body to be seen for only a second before stealing away, past the shops and houses and childhood homes, past the people I once knew or pretended to, past the place where I helped men in dark suits bury Cha because my mother couldn’t bear to stick around and watch her daughter be placed under the dirt.

A hand on my shoulder brings me back to this moment, the gentle notes of classical music drifting toward my ears like distant tide. It’s time to go in now, Shelby. I nod, offer no other response. If I’ve learned anything in the last decade, it’s that when someone gives you the go ahead, you shouldn’t wait around and give them the opportunity to change their mind. If I charge forward into grief now, it might pass.

The music doesn’t stop as I enter the hall, and the eyes of seated mourners find my body. I feel my neck flush red under this collective gaze as I make my way toward the front of the room, turning left at the front row of seats. We practiced this entry yesterday, as though this was a rehearsal for some twisted sort of matrimony. Perhaps today I formally join myself to grief, that old lover who has asked me for his hand so many a time. Rejection has done nothing to the fire that burns in his heart, and neither violence nor animosity has deterred his enthusiasm. Usually he floats, incorporeal, in the space between my bed and wall, in the tattered tiles of my ceiling. But today, as my spine finds the back of my chair, my sister’s name flashes into my field of vision, engraved into the skin of a man’s left hand.

The subsequent sob that escapes is loud, followed by a hiccup as I reach to stifle the noise I have made. Seated beside me, a stranger places her palm on my thigh, says It’s okay, baby. In front of me, I see my own distorted reflection in the smooth wood of my mother’s coffin. The music slows, a man clears his throat, and for the first time, my mother’s name sounds completely foreign to my ear.