Crossposting

So much of communication rests not on the eyes but on the muscles of the face. When my father was embalmed, the morticians thought it was a good idea to push his cheeks up into a smile. His mouth was closed the day he died. I held his hand that day. Rubbed my thumb in small circles on the back of his hand, even after he stopped breathing. His eyes were closed, his mouth slack. Someone removed a rubber piece that was around his arm. It left a dent that my mother and aunt tried to rub out. But when blood stops, muscles don’t move. And the deepest folds of his skin could not be smoothed out. I don’t know if I would have screamed had I been able to. I want to scream now. Or dissolve into water, like lluvia striking as it falls. On the day of his funeral I stood over his casket and realized how much of my father’s smile was not in his cheeks but in the wrinkles of his laughing eyes.

- from Muscles, a draft for now.
[Edited 7.25.16]