• Writing

    Decay

    She smells like peppermints and chamomile tea, aged cedar, and something I cannot quite name. As I sit across from her in a Victorian needlepoint chair, her smile is full of yellowed teeth and memory. Slowly, gently, she lifts a shaking hand and pats her white hair with arthritic fingers that swell painfully at the knuckles, and she nods. “I was once Ophelia and Juliet, my dear,” she says, her voice roughened with time and seasoned by years of smoking. “But the real love story; the one you have come to ask me about… well.” With a chuckle that ends in a cough, she reaches forward and takes my pen…