There was this sheen of gray skin, heaving up and down with every breath, she wore it like a coat - in folds around her mouth and wrinkles drooping over her eyes, making them look small and beady with limited white and ever dilating black. Oh, it made my skin crawl, the way blue veins pulsated just underneath it like snakes, still and breathing. It took my breath away, the way thin strands of her hair clung to the c***roach skin she wore on her head.
   I approached her carefully, stepping to the beeping, the pulse of a heart underneath that skin. With each step, her eyes would narrow, cloudy and black as night, trying to find me.
   “You’re beautiful.” It was a whisper of a moan, a cadence that played and touched her lips, words that only I could hear through her sigh; chest relaxing with pale breathes and loosening muscles.
   “Mama,” I said, “You can’t see.”
   “I know,” She sighed, eyes fixated on the ceiling. “I don’t have to.” It was so plaintive, her voice; like that was all she had to say, like that was all she needed to say. “I just know it.” And the faintest curl of a smile curved and folded against the dissipating elasticity.
   Those… I could not ask for any better last words than those, coming from someone so beautiful.