She lay there on the bed her head an imprint on the starched pillow her body a dead weight on the stark sheets. She lay there still, unmoving. They lay there too, almost innocent (the ones that hadn’t consumed her) little capsules of doom. She lay there but no longer there. She lay there no longer breathing.

 

We found her there our life filling the room the way hers no longer could. She appeared so at peace, finally tranquil. They (those that loved her but didn’t know her; father and mother) became still almost as her but a more charged still like the quiet before the thunder, the hush before the devastation. Thumb to absent pulse released the storm, the impossible, the pain.

 

They couldn’t understand they couldn’t see the why: empty pages of empty diaries could never clarify. She left nothing not a hint of her, no words no thoughts no letters, etchings, sketchings, she left what was left; nothing. They couldn’t understand but I could.

 

They asked me the questions they couldn’t answer. The why’s the how’s the what’s the unanswered. I knew not what to say the explanation could not be explained. She lay there no longer there and they sought reason, they sought justification, validation.

 

“People in pain bleed” they said. “She never bled” they raged. “No” I said feeling the cool of her hand beneath mine Turning her wrist to expose the whiplash of scars, “Never bleeding, just scarred”