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Death got young in her old age, the tears of the grieving family falling like aloe vera on her dry skin. Death got cosmetics, got cosmetic surgery, got wrinkle creams and eyeliner and sassafras exfoliant for her cracking back and linseed oil for her splintering legs, got tucks and nips and inches off her hips, bust, and thighs. Death got looks on the street, got offers for an ad campaign, got visions of infinite images of herself plastered on the walls of a subway car, her face never out of view, got boys to stop taking the subway just so they might catch her milky-white eye. Death got young and wore her hair short and painted her room with glow-in-the-dark paint so it would glimmer for a little after she turned out the light. She painted circles on the walls and stars on the ceiling and flowers on the floor; she put posters of kittens and pictures of all her friends on the walls; she brought boys back to her room to kiss, washed in the shine of her special paint, and the boys would always say "you're so beautiful" and she would always touch them on the tip of their nose with her false fingernail and the boys would feel it almost passing through. Death wannabe treated like a lady, understand? Just cause she dress in black don't mean she like it rough.
 

Death got young, too young, took too many lovers, watched too many sad movies. Hidden in a corner of her makeup mirror I have seen a picture of her from long ago, her hair in waves almost down to her toes, catching on the bracelets on her ankles, someone off to the side, their face blurred. She won't say who it is.
 

Death like buttercups falls softly on my skin, her tiny hands tracing circles on my chest. "I love your chest hair," she says, "I run my fingers through it and it parts like the sea," she says. She comes to me when I come back from the grocery store and I don't know where she got it but she brings me a flower that smells like a skunk and she says "tell me I'm pretty" and I say "you know you are" and "I don't like flowers" and she comes and sits on my lap, the eternal spring of her black youth falling heavily on my chest. "Will you cry for me when I leave you?" she asks, and I pull her skirt down, tighter, over her knees. She's aging as I watch. Death got young but not for too long now.