Rose Petals--a scene

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They lay me in a golden-brown coffin, resting my arms by my sides. Rose-colored felt lines the bottom and temporarily soothes my itching skin. Purple and pink roses are placed on the edges of the casket and the vines and petals trail into my new forever-home. Flies trail my kneecaps. People I’ve seen once, maybe twice in my life, come and go. They look at my pale face, my thin wrists and the dips in my ankles, and then they either weep tears or retreat silently. Minutes seem like hours as face after face, white, black, brown, yellow, peach—peers over the wooden wall and take in my still figure. Like I'm some animal at the zoo. Then my mother comes. She comes and scans her beautiful daughter until her gaze settles on my face. my mother doesn't notice what caught the eyes of other’s. How dead I was. All she registers is her only daughter will never hug her again. never bake and sing and paint again. the late nights we spent talking about boys and college and vacations while we painted our nails. Never again. then her red and puffy eyes shed tears that stream down her cheeks and noes, falling onto my face and I want to scream out to the drunk driver and force him to look at the pain he’s causing my mother, my family. I want to reach out and wipe the tears away and tell her it’ll all be okay. I want to feel her arms around me, her kiss on my cheek. The pain and regret in her torturous cries shake the building and send it tumbling down, not different than the walls of our life. We stay there, in the midst of the ruin, together, one standing and one falling. am I the one falling? Or is she?