by Lucille Bonne
Death has a distinctive smell
Death of a human that is
Not roadkill
Or a little bird the cat has mauled
Then dragged in onto your living room rug.
That’s different.
The stench of death encroaching in on a human body is putrid
There is nothing on earth remotely similar.
Yet, the smell was of no concern to me
I wanted to see it
Feel it
The shape of it
Texture
Colour
Form
Surely at least death has a form?
I wanted so badly to see it in the air around my father’s body
To grab it with my bare hands
Strangle it I needed something tangible to fight with or at least
Try to reason with I saw nothing.
All I could do was try to put it on paper
Contain it
Box it in
Not allow its presence to hold the room.
Scribbles and scratches
Black doorways and rough ink lines
I don’t think for one minute
That I captured it.
It only helped to dispel my rage at this invisible pervasive force
That whisked my father’s lifeforce from his body
As quickly and effortlessly as a child letting air out of a balloon
That they couldn’t manage to tie a knot in.
About the Author
Lucille Bonne is a visual artist and poet and flash fiction experimenter, hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland, now living in on the Isle of Mull on west coast of Scotland. She has previously exhibited in the Republic of Ireland and was recently published in Other Wordly Women Press.
