Wet summer storms blew open windows while we sat alongside the ancient, decaying woman. Her dead-leaf lips shaped soft consonants and vowels and her round, hairless feet peeked from underneath the blanket like moons. Those nights the green-cheese moon illuminated our smiling faces as we unearthed a thousand -year old memories. When she died they removed everything, after folding it away in small, neat squares I knew she would have detested. Within one day they wheeled in a new bed, along with a shiny vase of fake roses. Only one mark of her presence remained, and that was her smell, a sweet melody of baby shampoo and jasmine flowers. She was cold and gray when they pushed her away, still tucked beneath her thin blue sheets. I noticed that I could no longer see her feet. I wondered, then, if she’d shrunken over the years. She always hated that room and the stiff grin of its plastic flowers.