Vocab Poem

Senescent: growing old; aging
Soigné: carefully or elegantly done
Fugacious: fleeting; transitory
Leonine: resembling or suggestive of a lion
Inure: to accustom to hardship, difficulty, pain, etc
Incinerate: to burn or reduce to ashes
Ebullient: overflowing with fervor, enthusiasm, or excitement
Ceraceous: waxlike; waxy
Aphotic: lightless; dark
Languid: lacking vigor or force; slow

Ebullience was the last thing I could detect in the room. I recognized most of my relatives and many of my friends. All of the decorations, very soigné, including the many flowers, looked as though the family had been preparing for this moment for ages. They all moved languidly, as if nothing in the world could convince them to continue onward. They congregated around an object in the front that I could not make out. When I moved closer to everyone to decipher the reason nearly everyone I knew had congregated, I first saw a halo of leonine hair. The ceraceous skin beneath that halo next appeared. Whoever the person was, she had most certainly begun to senesce, as smooth skin no longer stretched across her somewhat sallow face. Her beauty was still obvious despite the equally obvious display of death. They told me her body was to be incinerated within the next few days. I hardly knew this woman, but I still felt pained when I realized she was now in an aphotic void, from which she could never return. I had never before understood the fugaciousness of life. My parents had taken me to this place so that they could pay their respects to my relative, though she was unknown to me, but, to me, this event had more of a lasting impression. I could never become completely inured to the loss of life, but I could always pick up the pieces and persevere.