Momento Mori

The skull is no death’s head. It signifies what endures, not what passes away, and death is only interested in the latter. That peanut-shell hole where the nose goes. Those eye sockets. But, even there: sockets is not a good word: it implies, say, a hip joint, the solidity and heft of bone in bone. Where what is lodged in the eye socket is soft as soft. Soft is death's realm.