My aunt is only forty-five when a blood clot dislodges in her leg, floats up her veins, clogs her lungs, stops her heart, and she dies in an ambulance.

She would've liked my dress. It's floral, not black, and shows enough breast. I've got to look hot at the funeral; two of my high-school exes will be there. One used to be my aunt's stepson and the other her ex-husband's younger cousin. We didn't grow up together as stepcousins or whatever. We were friends, and then my aunt married into their family.

My mom has four sisters; my dead aunt and her twin are the youngest. I'm trying to remember her, my dead aunt, but all I can summon is a vague, constant presence. She had a great laugh, but I can't hear it in my head now. I work on the slideshow and Mom says to delete the pictures of my aunt at her biggest. Even though she looks happy, arm around her son and wearing cute earrings. Mom selects an old portrait to frame and set centerstage at the service. She's beautiful, smiling, high canines like mine, thirty-something. This is how we will remember her. We will delete her sad, fat decade.

I wonder if my exes notice I have only gained twenty pounds since graduation. I wonder if they like my hair short. I wonder if they remember my ass in a bikini at Daytona Beach.

I approach the casket. They made her look old, Mom says, upset about the makeup. Pink old lady lipstick. I look and look, not expecting her to breathe or anything but trying to recognize her. She is grey. Her hands a stranger's. But then I see it, between her closed eye and her arched eyebrow—I see her. I recognize myself, as well, in that smooth patch of skin. I start to cry.

My exes gather around, hold me. I am pleased they are balding. My aunt's ex-stepson laments that they hadn't spoken in years. Over something stupid, he says. I thought there was time. He was a state-champion wrestler but now wears the softness of fatherhood. He introduces me to his little boy and his little wife. She asks if I'm a cousin.

I'm the dead woman's niece, I say, and at the same time my ex says: Yes, cousins.

We're not really cousins. I squint at him.

I realize it sounds mean. Maybe today he wants to be united in death as cousins, but all I'm saying is that I wouldn't have fucked him in his car multiple times a week for a whole school year if he were my cousin. His wife asks my name again, and her blank face reveals that he has never mentioned me.

My aunt and my ex's father had a son together. He is my actual cousin, and he is my ex's half-brother. If we'd had a baby it might have looked like him. He is fifteen and very handsome and keeps standing by the coffin.

I follow my other ex outside and try to flirt. One summer we almost had sex, but he got nervous. I wonder if he wonders like I wonder. He hands me a vape pen.

In the church, I read the eulogy I collaged together from family stories since I can hardly remember anything specific about my aunt other than she liked potbellied pigs, bedazzling, and vodka. I choke up and my Yankee cousin has to finish. She drove all night from Connecticut. She has vivid memories of my aunt because she only saw her like ten times. She's all over the slideshow. People only take pictures together when they're never together. The minister starts sweet but then yells, Repent! Repent! My mother is shaking—furious and sad.

At the gravesite my manic aunt weeps on Pop's plot nearby. He died some years ago. In her black shawl, dusting off the grave marker, my aunt looks like a frail Italian widow, reminding us all she suffered the most. Right after the divorce, my manic aunt fucked my dead aunt's ex-husband—which is way worse than going to prom with your sort of stepcousin.

The casket is lowered, a buzzard circles rudely above, then Mom helps my hunched grandmother back into the car. My aunt is under the ground now, bedazzled flip-flops on bony feet.


*


A story Mom said I couldn't use for the eulogy: the twins covered in shit, grinning in their crib, and my mom, the oldest, cleaning it all up.


*


That night my family and my aunt's ex-husband's family get drunk together, which is what my aunt would be doing if it hadn't already killed her. Someone makes me laugh, and I spit out my drink. My ex starts a tickle fight, and then we're on the ground wrestling like old times. His reflexes are slow, so I pin him down and he shouts for backup and my other ex pulls up my funeral dress and slaps me on the ass. The room laughs and laughs and suddenly I find it in me like a lost earring under a couch, and I let out that characteristic HA! HA! Haaaa-a-a-a! unraveling at the end like a lawn mower powering down. Everyone is quiet and somber for a moment, and I think I see my aunt resurrected in a doorway, backlit by the moon. She's not angry anymore. She's not depressed. She starts swimming laps, meets a sponsor, goes to the doctor about the mysterious pain, and she does not die yet. But, of course, it's not her; it's her twin. The slim twin whose eyes are red and whose birthday will always be sad now. She smiles at me, and I see our canines. She raises her brow and there we are on that smooth stretch of skin above the eye, where earlier that day, surrounded by cousins and not cousins, lovers and ex-lovers, we saw ourselves in the face of the dead.

.