Stolen Breath

“Paint me,” Grandma ordered from her bed.

Her frame was frail, skin translucent, eyes hollowed.

The maid wheeled in a squeaky cart of ceramic pots.

They didn’t look right. Didn’t smell right.

Red ran watery, clotted in chunks.

Yellow, frothy and acidic.

Brown, like rotting flesh.

I gagged. 

My brush strokes turned frenzied.

Her likeness became a smear of foul on white.

“Sign it.” She exhaled on her last breath. 

I did. 

My skin tingled like static, as if not my own. 

 The painting shifted—no longer her—me.

Pain pierced my chest. 

Grandma inhaled,

filling our lungs.