Scything

The difficult made holy by happenstance. She was delirious, but understood she’d make the first cut soon—minutes, perhaps seconds. She recoiled imagining the pain.

The rain in Maine stayed mainly in her brain. She moved—graceless—in a fog.

The reaper was scything at her heels. She resolved to move while she was able.

“His lips are brought down and his head again, yes, the gulls were there. They never miss an evening. They are grey slush in the spewing meatus of the sewer … It is the placenta of the departed, the red rigor of post-partum.”

— Samuel Beckett / Dream of Fair to Middling Women