Word Count: 264
She pulled out the beans, shaking the dirt from their roots, picking off the missed beans that hadn’t already grown fat with seeds. Maybe this would be the last time she’d autumn clean her garden, maybe there would be no planting in spring.
Her doctor-estimated rate of survival was still 30%, no more.
At night she sits outside holding onto the day. She dips a finger into the moon and paints baby gray clouds, pokes holes in the sky for stars to shine through. She can do that though she never would have thought to try it before.
She’d refused chemotherapy, tried one round of radiation. She couldn’t justify the expense. If there was a God, then death held no fear. If not, then what was the point of living? She’d borne two children, fulfilling her obligation to nature. She loved them madly, of course, but knew the need to let go.
She brought in a basket of tomatoes shaded from dark green to full sunny red. The one thing she’d miss most, she’d decided, apart from her family and friends, was the warm sun that came in through the window at mid-day, spilling into her sink.
There was little pain, little inconvenience, little change now. The procedures and cures were worse to withstand than the cancer. At the end, she’d accept the morphine. That was her plan.
Meanwhile, she spent her days cleaning, sorting, readying herself and her home. And her nights she spent reading the classics of Faulkner and Blake and such, and sitting under the moon fingerpainting the sky.
