I had been thinking about the taste of words. I did that a lot, thinking about the flavor of language. There was this idea about finding the perfect dish at my restaurant. The dish that everyone would taste and love, no matter the palette. The pipe dream of a naive chef. There had to be a pattern to those words I would add to my dishes.

  The word salt had tasted like a rubber ball pressing down my tongue. Rosemary opened my mouth to a mountain’s spikey edges. Love? Like warm brownies. Death used to taste blue, but it changed so frequently. It started as the deepest blue of the ocean, salty and prickled. It started as Death. The definition. The way it felt in my mouth when I could speak it. When I wasn’t shackled in this unmoving, unspeaking body. How it started at the top front of your gums and slid out of your teeth like a whisper.

  Now, salt feels deflated. Love? Metallic. And Death? I find it fun to roll around in my brain. What was Death at my Grandma's funeral? Bittersweet, like an unripe strawberry. My brothers? Painful, like an unexpected spice caught in your throat. Did my senses change or the word? Now, I think that Death has started to taste velvet- black and sensual. My brain had begun to court the word. I would get sick thinking about that if I could.
"Hey, Rumi," she said, sliding in the room. Vic’s voice tasted like the first spoonful of honey. The sense of overwhelming sickly sweet that made my throat cringe as I tried to swallow down the thick mass. The aftertaste promised that the next spoonful would be better. I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
She sat next to my hospital bed. I couldn’t see her, but I knew. It’s what she always did when she visited.
"I'm sorry." I could hear the tears in her throat. I wondered if they were also hard to swallow. "You didn't give me a choice, your letter was so specific..."
When we got married, we wrote medical letters, telling each other what to do... just in case. It was funny. I would laugh if I could. I didn't have the physical to tell me how I felt anymore, so I listened to the mental.
Right then, the room sounded funny and fluid- an oceanic layer that made me breathe through a dream. It felt like she wanted to hug me... hit me... choke me under the earth through the pure force of existence and honey.
"I hope you know that I love you," Vic’s words tasted metallic. We were both unable to swallow now. We were stuck, unfeeling to the most basic. "Your parents are here too."
She replied to my shadow, “They don't deserve to be here, but they are, and you can only be so selfish, Rumi."
An assortment of ruffling white robes walked into the room and talked to Vic.
"Don't worry." She tasted hollow. "They will be waiting outside."
I fell back into isolated, selfish thinking. The black velvet sigh caressed my subconscious. I was more comfortable with solidity now that she was here. More comfortable with past reality. I remembered that Vic and I went to a formal and I wore a velvet dress. We had to leave early because the texture got caught on my skin, pulling at the invisible seams and dead skin on my finger tips. She and I spent the night eating oil filled fries and laughing about the other pretentious people.
Am I scared? Fear tasted like the punch at the formal, watered down and simple.
Death tasted the same as a sultry velvet. It broke off on my nerveless skin, slipping over my curves, upsetting my sensitive. Sultry was so different from velvet. I liked that word. Sultry felt like an oil spill, gorgeous and fascinating, intermixing colors that smoothed over the ocean.
But then you would see the birds, caged, locked inside their own water-phobic design... and you choked.
"Are you ready?" The white coat asked.
Vic sighed, "yes."
That word felt cold, pretty, and calculated. It probably tasted plastic, like blowing up a balloon.
The room went silent. Silence tasted sultry. My throat relaxed into itself, the siphon of Life leaving my lungs. I laughed at the idea of Death tasting like a feathered bird dressed in sultry, oil-spilled velvet.

    ~~~

  The doctors pull the endotracheal tube out of her throat. I think about words. How they feel. I remember how the word death felt to me. Enigmatic and tired. It had the feeling of a wise old woman exasperated by the constant questions from her grandson. I see her smile, like the stopping of the heart monitor is an inside joke only Rumi knew. What could have been so funny? I think about the word again and try to shake her expression.
How does death feel now? I can’t picture it. It feels selfish. It feels like messy handwriting scribbled fast on cheap paper. Like cute kisses as we seal the envelopes with excited wedding chatter. Hot tears burn my cheeks. No.
No, it feels new and bright.
No, it feels unfinished.
No, it’s selfish.
It feels like cold, sterilized bones. Like ash slipping through my fingers. Like a beautifully ugly transition.
“I bet she romanticized it,” some part of my brain whispers, “I bet death felt like a blanket to her.” I don’t want to think about death anymore. Instead, as those doctors try to pry away information from me for their documents, I stubbornly think about Life.
What does Life feel like?
It feels liminal and surreal. It feels like falling. Right now, as I sign away my wife's last selfish wish, Life feels like stopping mid-sentence. It feels like luxury. Like velvet. It feels like she was nothing but a visitor on my journey, and now that her job is complete, it's Time for me to continue... My fingers are catching on the velvet.
As I walk out of the room, I start to think about S words.
“Selfish, Stupid, Sinner,” her mother Sarah says to me in Rumi’s voice. Those words feel timed... passed... I ignore her and try to think more. The fluorescence of the hospital room tastes like Rumi’s Melo Melo. I do not remember my reply.
What do I feel?
“I feel dead,” I laugh. I think about Life, and it feels like I am teetering on the edge of death, where fear, confusion, pain, love, and excitement all mix to tell me that feeling means nothing. Words have meaning, but what is it? What kind of feeling do they have? I walk past Sarah, refusing to meet her eye. I think about the night Rumi and I left her formal early because I was uncomfortable with all of those watered down chefs.
I float out of the hospital and into the blue summer sky.
And I think about C words.
Coward. Control. Cunt.
Nothing. That word feels like the C... calm, constant, and comfortable. I want nothing more... but when Rumi left, she took my words and left me with something – something that... cripples and controls my nothing.
I sit at the hospital bench for widows and piece my mental, hoping to connect it to the stable physical. The raining cherry blossoms make everything sickly sweet. I look at the falling petals and cringe. They’re gorgeous. Life is cerulean. And I am left with...
Rumi is selfish. Tears fall down, the waves of refreshing wind cool my face. Rumi was selfish. To leave me alone here, living with something.
Maybe I could be selfless? Join her... and tell her how I couldn’t survive in her opposite state. Selfless.
Selfless feels... like the soaring birds, floating through the oceanic air...salty and timeless. Selfish... feels brutal... and bare... and... tiring.
I look up to where the noteless birds swim. Rumi left me... Rumi leaves me with Time.
And Time feels like a de-feathered bird exposed to the cerulean ocean air.