Prompt was: "Death was last seen in the auction room, looking worried." from the David Lehman poem:

Death was last seen in the auction room, looking worried. She had cleaned out her heart, the tiny back corners of her mind, and her soul was swaying gently in the breeze outside, drying on the wash line under the golden, Summer sun. When she brought her soul back in, she knew it would smell like fresh laundry - that clean cotton smell - and June flowers. She knew the light her soul had soaked up would spread throughout her, starting in her core and gliding on until it glistened out of her buttery blonde hair.

Her freshly washed and wrung-out heart would pump stronger than before. The light would shine on those formerly-neglected valleys of her mind.

The junk that had littered her life before was systematically stacked up in the other room. Old fears, nagging thoughts, worries that constantly buzzed like flies — all neatly arranged in the front room, closest to the door.

On her final trip to the front parlor with her last box of embarrassment, she saw Death there. He was picking through her discarded things, mulling sadly and forlornly over some old heartbreak or other. She saw him glance at her longest running nightmare, disappointment on his face. But it was as he noticed the resolve standing guard to the rest of the house that he'd become worried.

She felt badly for him, wondering how he'd spend most of his time now, so she gave him a small smile as she dropped the last box down.

The auction was for him, trying to give him some final value from her abandoned things. She knew, though, that he wouldn't get much for them, since most were only thoughts.

So with a little wave goodbye, she turned around, heading deeper into the rest of the house and to the sunshine in the backyard. She wished Death the best.