21.Aug.2003

I know it is.

--

"want to come back to my place and get drunk with me?"

"Yes."

My brother and I left the ICU at Mercy hospital, and I issued the invitation. I don't have to reiterate that when we're alone together, drinking, we reminisce to our pasts. Since our mother has been in the hospital, all of our conversations have centered around times with her.

We take it pensively.

This whole thing, the past 40 days even, has served nothing but a reminder to how precious human existence truly is.

I don't have time for games, insecurities, bullshit. I don't have time to be insecure and full of bullshit. I don't have time to be making up for all of the lies I told at seventeen. I don't have time to be someone else. I don't have time to be unhappy. I don't have time to remain here, accomplishing nothing. I don't have time to be The Sound and the Fury.

I am calling to all four corners of the world for those who know me. I need this esoteric bunch. I need your familiarity. I have closed off all other options. I want to tie up loose ends. I want to tell the world I know what loss feels like.

--

My mother slipped into a coma four days ago, due to the weight of the medication and her infections. Seeing her, frail and miserable, in a hospital bed in the ICU at a hospital eleven miles away from where I live, does nothing but remind me that I forgive her and love her immutably, and that I recognize clearly the fragility of human existence. It does nothing but make me want to forgive everything and start anew, with a clear perception, unbruised, undone, open, pure.

I don't have time for negativity. I don't have time to wear the Catholic heart on my sleeve. I don't have time to hold grudges.

I just want to be happy.

I just want her to awaken and tell me in her 51-year-old, teenaged-infused dialect, "Love is the coolest thing ever."

Goddamnit, mom.

Wake up.

--

time & machine