I sat quietly in the corner, listening to music from the fifties, hoping beyond hope my mother would stop watching the movie before her eyes. But Bruce Willis kept dancing the river dance with his kids just home from camp. And Michelle Pfeiffer kept crying and babbling about literature and relationships. And in the end, the middle, really, it was a happy ending. I couldn't help but want to stop her. She was watching something she'd never have.

"Smile," whispered through my mind. The slow, internal message of the song I was listening to. Nothing seemed like more a lie than that simple word. Smile. Another song came on, moaning of the face of mona lisa. I felt like I was her, with dead dreams surrounding me of men that had nothing to do with who I was. The television screen kept going as the credits rolled.

The phone rang and I ignored it. I wanted a smoke. With a meticulous way, I left the house, runners getting too old. I didn't want to complain because I was afraid she would cry. It wasn't beyond her. They trotted down the stairs, leading my feet as easily as my motor functions did. But I knew it wasn't my motor functions. They hadn't been working properly for some time now. Since the day, really. That day, I should say.

I shrugged at my internal voice, mentally telling myself of how I had got to where I was. There was no true, one answer, and I think my mother knew that. I wanted to write a story about a girl with a father. And I tried. And tried. And tried. But I couldn't bring myself past her beginning teenage years. The only experience I had with fathers and teenage years had come from literature. What kind of lie about truth would I be telling if I wrote about inexperience? I felt a child with my hands in paint, trying to discover how to manipulate the colours.

The cool air slipped over my face, tangling the straw hair that hung at my neck. I wasn't pretty. God knows I wasn't meant to be. But I had managed to make myself likable enough. That was, at least, until you go to know me. Then I would stab you with the venom of my words and your self-esteem would wither. Only the most potent of flowers survived my words. The Oleanders. They never died. It reminded me of that book.

Although I longed for the cigarette that would bring some sick form of release, nothing touched my mouth but air. I couldn’t smoke, not after all that had happened. I needed the air in my lungs as much as I needed the blue pills shoved down my throat. Too bad I wasn’t a cat and wouldn’t bite them when they tried. I’m sure they knew, when they looked in my eyes, that a cat would be a far safer patient than I.

Wilted flowers hung about the yard. I watched with them with curiosity, time reversing itself, and the petals began to spring back to life. Not like in the movies where they do so rapidly, unraveling as though made of ribbon. No, this was fast, and jittery. Time was having problems reversing, and the film was jumpy. An old movie of sorts as the magnolia petals became cream once more.

From within the house, the dog barked, and I snapped awake. The dog jumped up and bit my arm, teeth scratching along the already marked flesh. I hit him hard in the head and pushed against his massive chest. The Great Dane moved backwards and jumped up again. My arm went up to protect myself, and the other hand pushed him back. Only then did he seek to grab the pant leg of my scrub. I pushed him inside the kennel and slammed the door. My arm bled and I grabbed a paper towel, putting pressure on the cuts until they stopped bleeding. And then I pilled a cat.

Slipping the pill down my throat, followed by water, I wanted to shake my head, to pretend it hadn’t happened. My arm was cut and I watched the fine lines as though they would open again. Blood stirred under old scars. I scratched my hands, listening to the hum it created. Inside my bedroom, skeletons lay about. The roommate didn’t see them. They were my own to keep.

It was a mess inside my room to hide all the dead butterflies that hadn’t made it out the screened window. Their knowledge held them inside until they rotted. Behind the walls, down the street, towards the corner, a bus zoomed by, carrying people with a future. I heard it without hearing it and stood in my room, surrounded by dead people and dead butterflies and the colour green. Music sang from the computer screen.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that save a retch like me. I once was lost but now I’m still lost and no matter how many times I hear this song nothing changes. The priest, if he could call himself that, stood at the podium, with a guitar over his shoulder, a wooden cross hanging from his neck. In the next room, his leather jacket sat. His voice carried, along with the ‘audience’. They sang amazing grace together and I could vomit.

The funeral wasn’t meant to be a sing-a-long. It wasn’t what my grandfather would’ve wanted. But this wasn’t his funeral. Or was it? His death hindered my vision and all I could see was his gaping mouth, and the way, when he breathed, that you could see his heart beating because he was so skinny when he laid down. The stomach sank so low you could see the rib cage clearly, and in between the ribs, at the bottom, the heart pumped. I wanted to touch it. But he smelled of death and dying dreams coated his skin as a mucous. His hand grabbed my arm. “Die! Die! Die! I want to die!” he sang sweetly and screamed at me, his eyes closed in pain.

“Go away,” he said next. His black hair hung about his face as he lay on one side, the breathing so laboured it made my throat close. The curtains across the hall were watching my grandfather die three years from now. Right now, I was watching my father die, across the hall, in the first room. The final stop. He gasped as they turned him over, the lung flopping about uselessly inside. He gasped. And gasped. And gasped some more. And then he stopped, all buggy eyed and dead. They looked like glass, the beaded eyes. I thought some sick priestess in ancient times would have necklaces of glass eyes.

The cat growled while I pilled her, slipping my fingers around the upper mouth, pushing the pill down the throat. A syringe of water shoved to the side of the mouth. The grey granny swallowed and growled, shaking her head and water splashed my scrubs. I walked out of the room and out of the other room and in to the front room to grab something from the receptionist. The most important woman in my life walked in and it meant the other important woman in my life was dead.