The spring sun melts the licorice into a pool by her head, waiting to sweeten with the time. She could taste it all too well in her mouth, where is started deep in her organs and intestines. A fatal hemorrhage had occurred, setting her guts in discord and bleeding through her mouth. She could hardly blame her body for turning against her, though; indeed, she thanked it for all the years they had spent together and how long it had kept up despite hardship, body a faithful servant to her mind beyond her brain. Even the strongest can be beaten by relentless blows, for the body really is only a delicate subject, and the mind is a precious offshoot gift.

This is what a slow death feels like – full of thanks.

Her vision blurs with black splotches like the bubonic plague, but her eyes stretch themselves to see the world before it ends. The sky yawns above her, and she stares down its gaping throat, encompassed everything beneath it in awe, and at the edges is grass wavering in the wind. Her chest expands with gratitude toward the world for being such a beautiful place for her life to take place, for her life introducing her to such a beautiful place, and a suffocating pain. When they find her cadaver, they’ll find a woman cloud-gazing in a meadow, bathing in a tub of candy liquid the color of passion for existence. They’ll see her expression is serene despite the gashes and bruises on her stomach and internal injuries doing their risky business.

They’ll see the sun and the sky, the grass and the ground, and realize how precious the air they breathe is; how precious their children and memories are, how wonderful it is to be alive and how definitely black death is. They’ll load her body onto a gurney, but before they set her down, her head will loll limply to the side, darker clots of blood with escape through her fading lips like words to stain her blouse with claret, and her hand will fall lifelessly as if it were reaching to graze on the newborn grass. Death is tragedy, but it is also inspirational, or at least, that’s how it should be –

full of thanks.