Trying and Failing.

She's got her halo and wings
Hidden under his eyes
But she's an angel for sure
She just can't stop telling lies
But it's too late for his love
Already caught in a trap
His angel's kiss was a joke
And she is not coming back

She forgot it was Sunday, and her mother came to visit on Sundays. If she had remembered, she would have put off going crazy until Monday. But instead, her mother found her, wings a mess and feathers strewn across the living room floor. Her eyes were glassy and her face wet. Her thin layer of skin was scaly and yellow. She shook uncontrollably, smashing her old wings over and over again against the couch.

Her mom slid to her knees and hugged her daughter.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” She only got a whimper in reply.

The small nineteen-year-old girl hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. The girl wasn’t Katherine. She looked like Katherine; she smelled like Katherine, but she wasn’t Katherine. Katherine was already gone; she was flying, weightless in the sky. She was finally an angel.

The time seemed to tick by in slow motion as her skeletal body collapsed on the floor.

“Katherine! Katherine! Open your eyes for Mommy. Come on Baby you can do this.” Her mother pleaded in vain to her now unconscious body.

Her body lay motionless on the plush carpet. Her mother rushed around, grabbing the phone and letting her frantic tears crash to the ground. Eventually her shaking fingers made it to the correct buttons, and she spoke to a nice woman until she heard sirens in the distance.

***
Yea, she's an angel for sure
But that remains to be seen
Because heaven sends and heaven takes

In her whitewashed room Katherine lay hooked to respirators and IVs, her breathing steady and her heart rate repetitive. Her mother sat, head buried in her hands, beside the bed. Sobs escaped her lips as she remembered.

Sept. 7, 2005

I heard her whispering in the kitchen again, her words said she knew; she knows, yet she hasn’t done anything.

“It’s such a horrible way to live.”

Yes, Mommy, but it’s such a beautiful way to die.

“Ms. Banks?” The doctor beckoned her out of her self-pity pool.

She saw the question and the answer in his eyes. Sure, he had done this many times before, but every time the circumstances are different. Every time seems a little bit worse, and this time he just couldn’t bare to say it.
She was long gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

Ms. Banks just nodded and slipped the golden locket off of her daughter’s frail neck. The doctor turned and beckoned to a nurse. It had been weeks since Katherine’s heart failure, and they just couldn’t keep her alive anymore. The machines were doing their jobs, sure, she was breathing, and her heart was steady, but she wasn’t alive.
She hadn’t been alive for a long time.

This time she was ahead of everyone, already at her destination, already flying with the angels, instead of being stuck in the past

But as they unplugged the chorus of machines, her mouth was filled with a miracle. After years of not tasting anything her tongue shuddered in pleasure. This was like nothing she could have ever imagined.
”Perfection has a taste all it’s own.”

She always wanted to be an angel. She wanted to live in heaven.
So she did.