Leah
You hear about death your whole life.
People speak of it in hushed tones at funerals, in careful metaphors when explaining it to children, in prayers whispered to ceilings at three in the morning when the world is too quiet and the body is too tired and the mind wanders where it shouldn't. They tell you about lights at the end of tunnels. About warmth. About the faces of people you loved waiting for you on the other side, arms open, smiles soft, as though death were nothing more than walking through a door into a room you'd always belonged in.
They're wrong.
Not about all of it. But about enough of it that the reality, when it came, felt like a betrayal. Another lie in a life that had been full of them.
The first thing I noticed was the weight.
Not heaviness in the way of a body
