Thank god they wanted a closed casket. Don’t wanna see what [she] did to [her] face. Her face that held the world in it— her relationship with the world, and her relationship with me. When the world was too hard, she listened to Candy Says again and again; she hated Lou Reed but she loved Candy, and I loved her, and I loved her.
Candy said: I’ve come to hate my body, and all that it requires in this world. Persephone said it too. She called herself Persephone but I called her Pandora, I called myself Edie but she called me Eudora. She wanted to return to the Earth what it had given her, when she died. The people that raised her, whose house she fled at eighteen, are as cheap to her now as ever, so I can give her that gift. And I will. There isn’t much to do— no trocars or solutions to deal with. I just have to break rigor mortis, pose and dress her. Easy. I do it all the time. What would she have worn for this? Why don’t I know? How would I know? Tonight is going to take years, like falling into a black hole. I get to spend it taking care of her, though. I am so lucky. I am so lucky to have known her and be known by her for so long. I am so lucky her family didn’t know about us. They’re holding a ceremony in the morning, not for a person, but for the idea of a person. A prop in whom her parents wanted themselves to be, a plaster cast of a good son. They’ll bury her, give her body back to creeping Charlie and violets like she wanted. Can I call it a victory then?
They had a headstone made but it’s not for her. Her headstone will be the shifting clouds and a grasshopper, resting for a moment. Her grave will be marked by the grass growing a little greener, forever.
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