‘The Triumph of Death,’ by Jan Bruegel the Elder

Then the clouds came down so low they flattened the trees and the rain thickened, the drains backed up, the only color from the dead leaves hanging on like rust, the rest of it graphite gray: and the grocery store clerks and the bagger, the old folks talking about everyone dying, dropping like flies, you never know when your number comes up only God does but I wonder if it’s more a balance sheet, the ins and the outs: most of the boxes crushed and flattened by now in the recycling bins agape, on their sides spilling out like the dead (and if God really does keep track or instead we think too much of ourselves, and no one keeps track). They come for the trash every week, even on holidays: for the pop stars and celebrities, the unknown—and why the weight of the dead, so much heavier than the living, when there’s so much less at stake.

Categories: death, prose

Tags: after-life, celebrity deaths 2016, life and how to live it, pacific northwest, philosophy, religion, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer