Writing Some Prose

A Lecture On How To Disassemble The Dead

The day he died, there were so many flowers that his body could not be brought out through the front door. They say he died with no pain. How they know this is yet to be determined. But his friends insist that he died with no pain.
He was found underneath his bed, five days after he had died, while on the fourth day of his death a search-party of five hundred volunteers searched the countryside, clearing brush and lifting every stone to see if he was there.
When the coroner arrived, he asserted that he had been dead for five days and that he had died with no pain, but offered no explanation as to how he knew this. He simply said, “No pain. Five days.”
As soon as death overcame him, his body grew long and taut, his head sprouted thick coils of wisteria, and from the edges of his eyes a yellow glow, timid and alive, ran down his torso. And his lips. Those bright lips. Those lips, the color of dark roses.
When they finally decided to take his body to the morgue, six hours later, his mouth had stiffened and filled with moss. The dead man was so beautiful that the coroner did not have the courage to deny anyone that beauty and grace. So, for twenty-five hours, the people just came through the window of the house, some twice, and they permitted themselves to think that the body belonged in a museum.
Instead of covering the dead man, the coroner wept and put his handkerchief in his hands, which were strong and big and warm and beautiful. And when he touched his shoulder, he felt the soft murmur of a pulse. And he could not help but think that the dead man was alive, that his blood sang in the voices of windows, that his heart, like the black stars of the cold morning, shone brightly, and he imagined that butterflies were opening the dead man’s sad eyes and that irises were eating his small, fine chest.
When word had reached the distant villages that a young man had died, the story had been terribly distorted. It was said that upon dying his face softened and, from his back, a set of golden wings sprouted, and from his wounds miracles spilled. And so, long lines of people, afflicted with the weirdest oddities, formed outside the dead man’s window: like the man who grew three rhinoceros horns from his chest or the voyeur whose eyes shifted from his face to the soles of his feet or the Siamese twins who shared a liver or the old woman who traveled farthest in hope of curing the unrelenting pain in her dentures or the child born with the face of an insect or the whore who shouted her catechism each time she made love. This carnival of people, however, found no consolation in the dead man because they realized that he was not a savior but an imposter.
Upon returning to take the body to the morgue, the coroner could not help but notice that the room was now dark. The window was a jet of water. The walls were large shadows. And the bed was no more. The dead man was more handsome than before. His eyes blossomed as large as sunflowers and a faint hum vibrated his mouth. Even in death, his handsomeness grew, and its scent rose and penetrated the tables. The turtles that were digging his chest scattered. His shoulders and jaw broadened. And his hair suddenly smelled of freshly rubbed lavender.
Hoisted on the shoulders of twenty-five men, the dead man was hauled through the dining room, where his feet, elegant and as white as marble, knocked over a vase of purple magnolias, prompting the coroner to decide that he was too beautiful to exit through the kitchen window, so he ordered that the kitchen wall be knocked down.
The men noticed that, instead of decaying, the dead man became heavier, less indignant, and that fair complexion that all dead men wear with pride gave way to that pink undertone of a child. It was incredible! His veins bulged with blood. His eyes reddened. His temples bronzed. His nails whitened. And his heart! His heart stirred like a million echoes.