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Pipa's Dying Joy

Taste: peeled, grated carrots and chopped cucumber with skins
Touch: tiny, sticky, leaves
Sight: a plastic tricycle — yellow body, orange seat, blue handlebars, hung up in a basketball hoop; Pipa's Red Fringe Flower: Loropetalum Chinense Pipa's Red also known as Chinese Witch Hazel
Sound: birdsong: sparrows, seagulls; scrabbling, skittering, thin claws skritch, skritching up the gutter, over the rooftop, through the walls and into the attic
Smell: the smell of death - unknown or sour, sweet rotten fruit, an alcoholic's skin the morning after binging, foamy hospital hand sanitizer; mint toothpaste in the break room
Extra: Stacey's green, cotton puckered shirt (embroidered with "Stacey" on the front?); Spicey's last gasp; grandmother's white, floured face; a resting place for weary travelers; a transformation, a change in form, "...the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter..." Gitanjali, Tagore
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