The dead woman stands there, just as before. Naked except for the white, blood-soaked cloth covering her head. From underneath the hood, thick drips of dark, clotted blood ooze down the woman’s sagging skin. Just-developed age spots freckle her flesh, rough scrub flanking the rampant rivers of her dark, purple veins. She’s sallow, livid, bruised. Her breasts hang like old meat cutlets. A wine-stain birthmark capping the curve of her left shoulder, once probably loved, kissed, marveled at as so perfectly hers, now stands like an infection point, an insult, an inescapable proof that this
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