The Funeral - CHARLOTTE ZHENG '29

You can always see your nose but your eyes ignore it

Because it’s always there—

Kind of like the monotonous hum of

the AC in the jammed room.

The walls are yellowing, a crack split across

the wall behind the officiate.

The ceilings are low. A light flickers.

The AC is too loud.

Grief. 

An ominous tension hangs heavy over the bowed heads.

A lingering rain cloud. 

The storm will pass. The storm always passes. 

But this,

This storm cannot pass. 

How can you move passed from someone passing?

Dead. Gone. Forever.

All around, there’s sniffling. People crying.

There’s a lady—head of white hair, lilac fascinator pinned

Perfectly into place. She looked to be somewhere in her 60s,

At least 15 years older than the person laying in the casket.

She reaches into her louis vuitton purse and pulls out a glinting compact mirror.

She dabs her glazed eyes with a tissue,

Looking into the small mirror that displays her entire face,

Wrinkled in time, in the sixty some years she’s lived.

She drags her pointer finger over a line connecting the edges of her mouth and nose.

She frowns.

The compact mirror snaps shut. The Louis Vuitton purse zips closed.

Her gaze refixates at the front of the somber room.

Her eyes have a faraway look. Lost in the mirror—

What she saw, and what it means.

A grim awakening.

She ignores the tip of her nose.