Yellowed.
Like old insulation
exposed furniture stuffing.
It was the color of his hair.
It looked a similar texture as well.
It was all pushed back but
the strands were not uniform,
as hair should be.
It had withered into sections,
separating the body of his hair into veins of pale yellow
that wrapped around the back of the man's head.
The low, straight hairline in the front betrayed him.
A toupee.

He putted down the supermarket aisle wearing
big, black sunglasses;
they looked like safety glasses,
protecting his bloodless eyes at every possible slit
the light may try to creep in.
The shiny, plank-like ear stems looked too heavy for his great, soft ears.
His body, frozen into position on the cart he was riding.
A locomotive statue.

They say,
a hundred years ago, when a person died,
the family could pay to have the person dressed up,
posed,
and photographed
as if they were still alive.
A final, cherished photograph of their loved one.
That was the look of this man.

A 21st century revival of the morbid
Victorian tradition.
Preserved, posed, motorized
on a supermarket cart.

While walking through the parking lot on my way to the car,
I noticed the same man steering a regular pushcart in circles
in the next parking aisle.
It reminded me of something I had seen before.

In college I worked for a veterinarian.
One of his regular boarders was an ancient miniature poodle.
Pierre.
Two years older than me.
A few stale, yellowing tufts of hair remained
on his scaly, transparent skin.
He did, however,have enough hair around his face
to tangle into mats and stick
to his
sightless,
white
eyes.

The hair could not be removed
the dog,
nervous in his old age,
would hardly stand to be held,
let alone have his hair trimmed.
The stress of holding him down would kill him.

So he walked his distorted,
old
body
in circles
in the silent feline kennel
in which he was always housed.

Reduced to a bundle of neurons, firing
only for breath and movement.

He was a sickening sight.

The space between sentience and quietus is the most haunting state of all.
It is merely inertia.
There,
the sight of waning momentum is more ominous than the stop.