Countdown to Exitus by Eliogema Udofia

You will agree with me the human body is a
mes[s/h], judging by how everything once
beautiful in it, slowly wilts into the wide chasm
of time. How the body, docile thing; is plagued
with such ephemerality, that a man could lose
everything, even the brightness that brims his
eyes— Here is a body, my Pa’s, whittled down
into mannequin. Like a cracked CD, slotted
into a stereo with prayer-stained fingers; I watch
his body, vanish into the CT scanner. I cannot
help but trace the alikeness of it to a coffin—
the CT scanner. His body disappearing briefly
into it; this is how we learn to prepare our hearts
for the actual loss the scanner reveals: my Pa’s
kidneys, in a monochrome portraiture, a dark
cloud speckled with cancerous growths, shaped
in the form of Portobello mushrooms. Ma,
wearing hope like a garland, goes over a rosary
prayer for as many times as her wrinkled hands
can count. Still, the clock ticks a chunk of life
from my father’s body, each hour lettering his
name into a tombstone. Ma’s prayers falling
back as the coldness on the patient’s bed rail that
makes my skin shudder. I do not tell her that
there are no miracles in this kind of things, it
is simple— what living thing homes mushrooms
in its body? On my phone, I google how to
control shock, because one day I will walk into
the hospital ward that smells of antiseptic and
pills and grief, and find my father, a prairie
devoured by brushfire. They will throw a sheet
over his face, because how they differentiate a
sleeping body and a cadaver is how much the
sheet devours the face.