Helpless. You are the one who haunts my waking dreams with racking visions of loss and death and regret. I arise in the night and peek over your bars and watch you sleep. I listen to the hypnotic beat of your breathing thump, thump, thump of your new heart. I'll rub your back and cradle your feet and pray you dream of play and fun and everything in between as you jump from star to star in the company of angels from afar. Quiet stolen moments in tranquil stillness just you and me and everyday I'm grateful your mine til the end of time. You and me and boy do I have big plans for us. I love you kid, so much, even when you fuss with kicking feet, pinches, and mouse bites.
" Have you talked to your cousin?"
" No, I haven't."
" Why not? You two were so close?"
" He's changed. Well, naw, not really - I guess I have. You see, once upon a time everything I ever did was for me. Now... well, everything I do is for someone else. Work. Traffic. Life's perpetual bullshit. It's all for someone else. Everything my cousin does is not."
" That's too bad."
" Not really."
Scared. My mind is flooded with "what if's." What if something happened how would I cope? Could I cope? It's a gray morning and I play "Tears in Heaven" over and over and I'm wondering why. I'm really fucking scared something might happen to you and this is really no way to live life continuously dreading what may pass or regretting what has already passed and completely ignoring or failing to pause and relish the "now." Every day you're growing up. I flip though photos really fast like a flip book and watch months pass in a matter of seconds and isn't that what it really is... seconds? The mind, memory, is a master illusionist. Time is a sneaky fucker. And again, more what if's? What if it was all a dream and one day I'll wake up in my bed and you never existed? How would I cope? Could I cope?
My life can be summed up in seconds. Twenty eight years of memories neatly packaged in a can complete with a label. Your life, reads volumes, and I love you for that. Your infinite, quiet, shy wisdom and a dreamy glint in your eye suggesting so much fucking more than this. You are my immortality. You are my totality.
You are my morality.
5 comments:
This isn't the first time you've written a narrative in the second person, but this particular post reveals a simultaneous hope and dread that is uniquely engaging. Parenthood will do that to you...
i have a little girl but she hasn't come to live yet. i can't wait. i can't wait. but i have to.
a terrible, sweet worry...constant, eternal - thoughts of reincarnation and the impossibility of not going through this again, and again, and again...for-ever
someone hurt my boy, his feelings, badly...just the other day - and for the first time ever, once i saw him cry like that, i realized what pain, real pain is really about . my son was hurt, badly, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it, but hold his little hand. a part of me died with his innocence...but a new world by morning - perfect for "chasing the ice cream truck down the block", said my little wiseman.
get ready to be there and absorb the amazing range of life that is to come.
another life in your hands, now those days of being self absorbed are done.
everything has new meaning now.
or more accurately, everything has meaning now.
congrats
Hermes! You old fuckin' dog! Still at this writing thing I see...damn glad you are as your stuff, as always, kicks ass!
Oddly enough, I have two kids and in the beginning worried everyday about what could be and what was out of my control...this forced me to live every day to make theirs the best. Someday we will part company and I'd like to think I didn't waste a minute sweating the details...instead we play baseball, build with blocks, and take lots of pictures...the little shits won't stop growing!
Anyway, Don't be a stranger...neither will I...I'll be back!
Rock ON!
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