alone

they found the younger sister face down in her living room. cause of death: heart failure. she had been smoking her whole life--at ninety four, you would think she probably had lived a pretty fulfilling existence. caught off guard. the older sister glanced down at her knobby pale hands, she wondered what made it right for her younger sister to just fall asleep and not wake up. or in this case, just [give up] and collapse to the ground. she had felt absent minded lately, but had come to terms with it. her blue eyes turning gray and her skin clinging to every bone...that also seemed to be getting thinner and weaker with time. aging is a fact of life. she felt alright because she had her best friend--her sister at her side. the same week her mind started to stray. she left a casserole in her oven overnight and woke up to find the house full of smoke. no fire. but she dreaded the smell that would linger for weeks...and went back to sleep.

ten weeks later she awakes from restless sleep shaking--freezing. the nursing home her family had put her in kept the temperature at a so-called comfortable sixty eight degrees. a good four degrees cooler than she kept her own home. she felt incredibly anxious but realized that it was probably just her irrational mind. anxiety had taken over since her family found her unfit to live on her own anymore. she slowly felt herself drifting away. but she knew that she had so much more to accomplish in this world. she had wanted to write. write a memoir of her sister--her best friend. so tired. this world wasn't beautiful anymore. it was four walls of white and the nice nurse that checked in every couple hours. a television replaced the wildflowers that she handpicked in her neighborhood every week. she just wanted flowers, but her caregivers couldn't allow it--they would irritate other patients. just flowers.

she was allowed to take short walks as long as someone went with her. first they take away her home. then her flowers. now. personal freedom was limited. but when she wasn't walking anywhere, they left her in solitude. with only her thoughts to console her. or rather--to cause her to be even more distant from herself.

every night she climbed into bed with a knot in her stomach. terrified that she would slip away during the night and no one would know. alone and cold she realized. it would all end.

[hhm. inspired by true events. fuck]