Sharp

I stand motionless.

After such news, anyone would be sad, but not me. Am I happy? I don’t know. I just know I’m not shedding a tear so I must not be sad.

The funeral home smells like cheap flowers and cleaner. My shoes are too high and barely fits me. I took the first black dress I saw on my closet and put it on without a second thought. I don’t think I even took a look in the mirror. Not since that call.

I start to walk towards her, with her hated flowers. Roses. Deep red roses, a little black on the edges. She always said they were “too dramatic” and preferred daisies. Plain white. Ella would have brought daisies, but not me, roses were on sale so that’s what I got.

Am I laughing right now? The corners of my mouth twitch, but I don’t know if its a laugh or just nervousness. I shouldn’t feel guilty. Ella was her favorite anyways. She never looked my way. She never cared.

When was it last time I received affections from her?

I don’t remember.

I reach the casket and look down. There she lies, motionless and peaceful. Someone has painted her lips a color she never wore in life. Her hair is smoother, her hands folded in a way I never saw when she was breathing. She is gone.

I place the flowers on the edge of the casket and turn away. My seat is somewhere in the second row, but I don’t rush back. I can feel Ella’s eyes digging in my back as I walk. When I glance over, she is staring at me, tears caressing her face, shoulders shaking.

I look away. She is faking it anyways.

Ella always lied and got her ways with things. I always was stuck with the consequences of her actions. We looked alike anyways — same dark hair, same gray eyes, same nose. Easy to confuse us. Easy to blame me instead.

“Are you ok, Emma?” — A woman I do not recognize touches my arm. She has soft eyes and a necklace I’ve never seen before. Family? Mother was a very reserved person. I never saw her with friends. Not the kind that would come to her funeral.

“Yeah. Just shocked, everything happened so fast. I am still processing….” — I say, because it's the kind of sentence that people recognize as normal.

I don’t feel what I’m saying. Someone like Mother who never had space for me on her heart, pulls no tears from me. There is nothing to process.

The woman squeezes my arm and moves on. People whisper around me, their voices blending into a distant hiss. I sit down in the second row and stare at Ella. Her hair is twisted into a neat bun, stray hair stuck to her damp cheeks.

When we were seven, we got into trouble for drawing on the hallway wall. We had stolen Mother's red lipstick. It was the only color she kept, a sharp red in a silver tube. Ella smeared it in loops and hearts on the wall. I watched and then added a sun in the corner because I wanted to feel included. Mother found us like that, finger stained and wall blood colored.

“Who did this?” She asked

“Emma” Ella said immediately. Her hands even more red colored than mine.

I tried to open my mouth to protest, but Mother’s gaze cut through me like glass, sharp and cold. She only looked at me.

“You are old enough to know better” she said. “I am very disappointed in you, Emma”.

Her mouth flattened. No smile. No hug. No “why did you do it?” Just that sentence. I spent hours cleaning the mess.

I can’t remember many times she hugged me, but I can count every time she looked at me that way.

“Family may now come up to say their final goodbyes,” the pastor says.

Chairs scrape. People stand. My stomach rolls.

Ella goes first, of course. She steps up to the casket like its a stage. Her shoulder tremble, and I hear a small, broken sound tear from her throat. She leans in, kisses Mother’s forehead, and whisper something no one else can hear. It looks like a performance.

Everyone watches her. People loves to watch a favorite. Then they look at me.

I stay seated.

You should go, a small voice in my head says. You’re her daughter too. Am I? Or was I just a reflection to the original. My hands twist in my lap. My palms are damp. I stare down at them and notice the pale half-moons my nails have pressed into my skin. I try to relax.

I try to remember the last time she kissed me. Nothing comes at first. Just scenes of slammed doors, cold dinners, corrected homework, “Ella, good job,” and “Emma, you missed a step.” Then another memory slips in. I was nine. I had the flu, the kind that burns and shakes inside your bones. Ella had gone to school. I stayed at home, shivering in my bed. At some point in the late afternoon, the door creaked open. I pretended to be asleep. Easier that way. I felt a cool hand on my forehead. Fingers brushed sweaty hair away from my face. “You are burning up” Mother muttered, but the words were softer than usual. Her palm lingered. The room smelled like sharp citrus and something floral, her soap maybe. She hummed, low and off key, as she wiped my face. A tune I didn’t recognize. I kept my eyes shut. At some point, I felt something else. The lightest pressure on my forehead. A quick, clumsy kiss.

I never asked if it was real or a fever dream. It didn’t fit with the version I kept of her, the sharp one with edges and rules. So I pretended it never happened.

I stand up before I realize I’ve moved. My legs carry me down the aisle. I feel eyes on me, burning holes through my dress. Ella has taken her seat again, clutching a tissue, but she lifts her head to watch me.

The casket looks bigger up close. Mother’s face is still wrong, too smooth, like a mask made to resemble her. Her hair is neat, not falling out of a messy bun like it did on rushed mornings. Her hands are folded, not tugging at bills or grocery lists or work folders.

I rest my fingers on the wood. It’s cold and polished, perfectly smooth.“You never had space for me,” I whisper, so low I can barely hear myself. “You never looked at me the way you looked at Ella.”

My voice doesn’t shake. It’s just a flat line stretching across the room.

“But I remember that day,” I add. “Nine years old. Fever. The song. The kiss. You did it once.”

Once in my entire life she kissed my forehead, and I almost erased it.

“It wasn’t enough,” I say, and I feel the truth of it land between us like another flower. “But it was something.”

I lean closer.

Her skin is waxy now, powder dusting her cheeks. Up this close, I can see the faint line between her brows, carved by years of frowning. I used to think that line was my fault.

I close my eyes and press my lips to her forehead, to the same place she kissed me.

It’s cold. The cold shoots through me, sharp and sudden, like ice water down my spine. This is my last kiss.

Mother wasn’t the mother I needed. She didn’t hold me enough or tell me she loved me. But once, she kissed my forehead while I burned. And now, I have kissed her back while she is cold.

First and last.