I make a beautiful corpse. I watch from above as the walker’s dog finds me. And then the police, discovering my body amongst the tall grass on the golden hillside. It takes them two days. I lie as if posed, a picture from another time. Pale as snow, my dark hair flowing around my shoulders. I wear a black velvet cloak, white silken dress. Clothes I never wore in life.
In my hand is the empty packet of pills that I took. I thought about opening an artery in my wrist, but the pain of doing it with a badge pin put me off. This is so much neater. Quieter. No fuss.
The police officers take my photo. From where they stand, they can see what I saw. The big hill with the sheep farm on the top, the ruined boiler house at the bottom of the valley, the little red brick village.
The sun is setting. No one but me sees the way the tall grass is set on fire by the dying sun. No one but me sees those vibrant purple flowers that light up the field where I died. No one but me remembers the tears that soaked the ground.
S J Menary 13/03/2013
Image from wikipedia.org.uk (orginal paining Ophelia by J. Millias held at Tate Britain, London)
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