I am dying. I have known for a while now, doesn’t make it any easier. My daughter, she makes songs for this maladie to wish it away like rain. She calls it “campher”. I call it nothing but the mass of decaying cells resting in my breast and circling my heart. It squeezes me dry. Leaves me as shriveled as the leaf piles we run through. Each step crisp, like bones snapping.

Every needle that goes in is piercing, cold. My eyes can only lock into my baby snarfing down fruit leather. Every pat from her oh so small hand leaves a spot of warmth. I can practically feel her soft heartbeat in her albeit sticky little fingertips. I wonder if needles break through leather like it does us.

Tomorrow we see the doctor again for our monthly check in. She will tell me the same thing that I’ve been hearing for months. That dialysis is going well, that we can appreciate what we have, sit on porches in the evening, then bask in the light breeze and the setting sun. What she really means to say is that I am dying. When the cold snap hits, I will go with it.

Next week is my birthday, my boisterous little girl spends it giggling over her favorite movie and shoving cake into my and her mouths. I can’t taste anything nowadays, but I tell her it’s delicious and give her my best I love you hugs. As the movie ticks to an end my heart beats slower, that ever multiplying mass gripping tighter.

My darling dear hates the cold, she stays cozy in bed as long as she can. I am having to stay there with her more and more. I am too tired, too weary. Before the ground freezes, there will be another body resting below its icy crust.

I have always known that I would spend my last few moments on this earth with my girl. We were together since before she was born and when I die, I worry about who will pack her favorite fruit snacks, who will know to put extra pairs of socks on her feet? She never liked when she had cold toes. I have already taken care that from the grave flowers will bloom for her, but a parent is nothing but the care for our children, channeled straight from our fear. 

They don’t say it, but I know. My eyes in their foresight removed all the water before death. I couldn’t stop them. I always controlled my tears, but they scattered across the faded linoleum. I made sure that my best girl had a show going in case my sobs broke through the doors. I feel myself reaching towards her for solace, despite how decayed I looked. But for her sake I couldn’t. Once I had nothing left, not a speck of salt left in my body, I squished her and told her she meant the world to me. She is so smart, she told me that she knew. Slipping into the mist, she and I fought the nurses so we were by each other’s side. 

Each other’s side? Or together. I don’t know.

The time has come. My body filled with chemicals meant to preserve my life, I asked not to know what; they blushed my cheeks and prettied me up. My family gathered around me for the funeral. I couldn’t see a single one of them, not with my eyes glued tight. I couldn’t find my daughter’s presence in my state and the worry fixed in, a parent shouldn’t let their child wander, what was I doing? Panic rose as they lowered the casket down. There was truly nothing I could do to protect her in my state. My screams become gasps. When all the flowers had been tossed, and everyone was gone I could only stare at the tombstone. 

Here lies **** ******, 

beloved daughter 

 a light in this life and the next

2022-2026

Edited by Halli Thompson

Artist Statement: My piece for this year’s theme Bloom and Wither is a short story where I attempted to portray a mother experiencing loss and grief as she goes though cancer. Yet, with a small twist that it was never actually her going through cancer. It explores themes of how people around cancer are just as much affected as those going through it as well as the effects and grief after that person is gone.