Sadness Has A Funny Taste (short story... very short)

They say you are not supposed to hate a ghost. When the spirit is whipped from the body, all baleful acts dissipate into the sky like serpents of smoke. They swim away, they do, your sins. They swim far away from memory when you die. But they don’t disappear, not forever. Instead, they morph into insidious shadows, and claw through your airways. Death fills you; it fills every corner, every crevice and every crack. It is an Arcadian and cavernous hell-pit with absolutely no tolerance for joy. It’s also selfish and completely full of shit. It has this taste, this really funny taste. Well it sort of tastes like nothing, but drier and more bitter. Sadness makes your mouth dry. It makes your skin dry and it makes your mouth dry. 

The audience of my mother’s funeral resembled something of a blank canvas, and something of a circus. They shook my hand, one after another, so very deeply sorry for my loss. Our family sat lachrymosely, attentive to the ceremony, some sniffled and heaved and some were porcelain dolls. I was somewhere in the middle. Behind us were rows of relatives, some of which I recognised and some of which recognised me. Some looked like they couldn’t possibly be of the same bloodline, with coffee-coloured skin and miles of thick tropical hair.

My mother’s body was a sinking ship in white sheets. For the last two years it kept shrinking into itself until her flesh was a thin layer wrapped around her bones. How absolutely dead she was, how dead she always was. My mother craved the life of a ghost, in her stories of mysteries and adventures, in her dressing gown and her diet. She must have, and that’s exactly what she got. Never liked to stay in bed. Now on bed rest forever. Never to get out of bed again. In a box. Trapped inside of a box. Kept from me. Kept from herself. 

I felt myself climbing into a little shell, my flailing limbs immobile. I felt that I had retreated to a new-born state. Words, symbols, music, gestures, were as alien as sunshine. And yet, the sky was so terribly blue outside, almost comely and forgiving. Two butterflies fluttered above a shawl of ivy that etched onto a stone wall, like tiny paper-lanterns. No place to go, but they're going places. I got to thinking, what a peculiar day for sadness.