SEX AND DEATH

Well she told me she
wanted to spend the night with me
in a low once-seductive rusty purr
So later on that night
as I helped her get
her top off over her head in an
obscene disgusting poignant parody
of the unknown amount of times
she’d done this before
her spent breasts sagged before me
and she was finally naked
hairless vagina a sign of her times
I couldn’t help but look up behind her
at the memory-lock pictures on the wall
of the often-forgotten family who no longer visited
and the house she could no longer recall having
despite standing at the gate in younger happier times
and shaking my head impotently at the waste of it all
as I helped her frail frame into her pajamas
leaving her to her fitful pit of depleted dreams
And as I stepped outside and closed her door
I bumped into one my fellow
minimum wage
overworked carer coworkers
and told her that Edith wanted to spend the night with me
“Just so long as you don’t kiss her,” she told me
with a humorless superstitious laugh
I asked her what she meant
And she said that Edith had been found
chewing on one of her own turds
earlier on that day in the bath
when she was getting scrubbed down
And I could only think to myself
for the thousandth cursed time
since starting that nursing home job
that if I ever got dementia
I would have the guts or sense to kill myself
before I ended up like that
staring silently in 80s nostalgia
at a meaningless barren wall of gone family
and feeling the merciless inescapable lapping of the sea of death
starting to creep up my helpless damaged body
as my own misplaced waste ruthlessly
stole the well deserved and earned scream
away from my
word-weary
toothless
mouth.

(NEAR THE) END