from Darlene at Last Count

It started with the putting on of clothes, each morning more difficult, though she insisted on dresses with zippers or buttons, resisting the filmy robes of an invalid. Cotton panties—one leg, two. Bra snapped in front, one tit in its pocket, two tits gone home. Then the slip, elbow cracking, shoulder, the stretch of muscles up the soft part of the arm and down the side that signaled pain to come, quick the other arm before the caught breath has time for release—that's it, now the dress, step in, one step two and squat to relieve the lower stomach muscles and straighten, the cloth rising like foam from the surf. (She had never actually seen the surf—just on television, many times.) Sprigged cotton, fresh, size eight.Always wanted to be skinny again, but not like this. She wore the clothes from her courting times, the ones she had kept all these years, refusing the rounding belly and bulldozing thighs, claiming I'll get this weight off and wear those clothes again, you wait and see!, with no sense of foreboding: a Sibyl's prophesy, the right words with the wrong meaning and no clue to their final music. It was a summer dress, light dimity, it zipped up the left side and had fifteen round buttons, neck to hem. Fifteen. And then sandals, one two. Slowly down the stairs, one two three four, the landing window giving onto the street, buckled asphalt and ragged growth serenading the telephone poles, five six seven, breathe in breathe out, eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen—a bad sign; she should start out with the right foot tomorrow, that'll make fourteen.

The milk in the glass—twenty-three swallows. The beets her mother feeds her, dices with her wrinkled hands—five slices for breakfast, seven for lunch, twelve for dinner, five swallows per slice. The beets are supposed to make red blood, to take over the manufacturing job her body quit doing. Tines of the fork: four. Crow's feet at the corner of her mother's left eye: five. To the back porch: one two three four. The rocker, three movements and she's in it. Hyacinths, pink: eight. White: three. Purple: nine.

The milk she can keep down: five swallows. No more dresses but three buttons on a flannel yoke. It's autumn so three blankets at night, one for daytime. Six bottles of perfume on her mother's vanity: White Shoulders, Opium, Emeraude, Jovan, Wind Song, Chantilly. Six bottles of pills, three bottles of fluids. The clock on the nightstand: many numbers to make sense of. Take the clock away, I can tell better time without it. The morning light on the pillow. Four different birdsongs before lunch, two beet slices. The evening gold on the far wallpaper. Five dutiful visitors: Go away, go away. I can do better without you. Skin and bones. How many bones? Not able to reach them all, she counts them from the inside: the feet take up an entire week. Another week gone, then two. The light on the pillow stays for 680 seconds. Three. One spoon of the pink medicine, one spoon of the beige. The drip of the catheter: one, one. The times she opens her eyes: once per hour, more at night. Why open them at all? She knows what she'll see. She's memorized everything.