I have picked the poison.
Did you know that when you die, after the dying part, after the big decision is made regarding what is to be done with that burdensome shell you left behind, when they get their hands on you, the real you, they split you open? It’s just like filleting a fish, and there are great, gleaming scythes just for this purpose and out spills all the gutsy words you never used, all those great thoughts unshared, the genius uncomposed, the use left, still fresh and uncurdled by time. And they, with delicate hands so very rarely seen and never thanked or held, clear away the silver pudding skin of time and throw all of that delicious stuff, the umami of the spirit, the meat that makes a man from a mouse, a woman from a whisper, back in the pot of what might yet be.
I would like to show up on their table and cause such befuddlement. Have the mongers and Makers cut their thin red slit from root to tip and a great cloud of ash emerge and choke them for a moment, make them put down their knives and struggle for the free air.
Is this the thing we’re going to do now? Just check, once a day, just peer in the window even as the signs change and the moving truck arrives to haul it all away?
It’s just a thought I have. A page I turn. A box I tick. Just in case. You know, just so that there isn’t a minute where your hand might suddenly extend and I would be unaware of the gesture. Just so I wouldn’t be ignorant of the change in the weather. We watch the channel so we’re not ever in danger of being unprepared. Not so we dwell on the matter, even if that is a side-effect. You thrilled me once by caring and you have not killed me with your disregard. It is one vignette in a long, long film. We may not even mention it in the final review.
But there is a sort of punishment for reaching out your hand, for engaging in the first awkward steps of the dance…
I feel quite a bit at the moment. I feel quite sad. I can’t fix it, except but to continue and live in other places and moments and hopes and stretch other muscles than my lithe and toned gluteus tristeus. Everyone says it’s natural to be sad as if natural means less strident, less directed, more easily given to decay. It’s just around me. You said you cared. And now the Void coos, and the subtle language of the dread, soporific Before sings in my ear, and now, I draw its vial off the shelf and sip.
….
These are the last imperfect words of an imperfect day, like a carrot in your hair, just left hanging out there, not folded neatly into the rest. It is without malice, it’s just its nature.
