with her eyes closed in passionate concentration. Black hair pulled back. She is wearing a blue gown and is barefoot, toenails painted a hot pink. Crossed feet resting under the dark wooden chair she’s seated on. The violin rests on her bare shoulder, her chin on the violin. One hand on the neck, one gracefully holding the bow against the strings. The dark, orange-red wood of the violin gleams. He likes her the best. Imagines a life for her, the pet iguana and above average people she left behind; that The Four Seasons was her jam. That someone who’d go barefoot to her own funeral service was his kind of people. There is a small marble side table next to her, and a blue vase filled with three white tulips. Musician.
He wonders how she died. Knows with certainty how he will, and give or take a few months, when.
Last week, with his girlfriend Konnie, they scrolled through images of dead people meant to look alive – extreme embalming. Part no fucking way, part why the fuck not, he wanted to get a closer look even though he was miles of mountains away from anything like this. There was a Hair Metal Band type in big sunglasses riding a crotch rocket, bike tilted as if he were leaning into a curve; a box fan was close by, blowing on his face probably to make his hair wave in a live action way. Adrenaline junkie.
“This is impossible,” he says to her. “To pick one thing. One final image that sums up your whole life, who you are.” Konnie throws out the idea, and feels it quite romantic, that she should be in his extreme scene with him; that they could be watching tv, or walking in the woods. He softly shakes his head no.
“It should really be about who I am, was. Dontcha think?”
“I know, but honestly what’s more you than us!” she chirped gleefully.
The company’s website called them “life restorations.” In another, an older woman with shocking white hair, in sunglasses, is posed at a card table. Poker chip stacks surround her like a fortress. There’s an ashtray with a lit cigar. A full cocktail glass of what looks like whisky. Behind her, a big decorative urn stuffed with peacock tailfeathers looms like a guard. Gambler.
Eyes open in passionate concentration. Black hair pulled back.
The dead woman says, “I do, I do love The 4 Seasons, it’s the rock and roll of classical music.”
She is wearing a blue gown and is barefoot, toenails painted a dark pink.
The dead woman says, “Make sure the people by your side at the end belong there.”
Keith Woodruff is a graduate of Purdue University and lives in San Antonio, TX with his wife and a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His poetry has appeared in RHINO, Quarter After Eight, The Journal, Poetry East, Sundog Lit, and most recently Tupelo Quarterly. His micro fiction appeared in Juked, Bending Genres and Wigleaf. His poetry and micro fiction were selected, respectively, for Best Small Fictions 2017 and 2019. "Elegy" (originally published in Wigleaf) received a 2018 Pushcart Prize. He is currently working on a chapbook.