i'll bury the version of me

that only existed for you

i'll bury her in a field of flowers

so she'll forever live in the scent

of the perfume on your neck

and when everything is done

i'll fall asleep without crying

and i'll be able to see you sober

- deathetix

Dear Former Self,

It seems that you held high expectations for me, and have come to the realization that I am not the person you dreamed up so many years ago. I have evolved in ways you can't imagine, experienced pain beyond you, and lost so much in so little time. Despite all of these challenges, I finally have crested this steep mountain I have struggled to climb my whole life. Now, I am ready to start the life that I always wanted to live, not the life you carefully planned based on the judgments and assumptions of those around you. I am ready to behold in my glorious future and achievements I alone dare to pursue. You may be worried about my sanity, perhaps packing your bags to come and visit me. Please, I beg you, my dear, don't worry. My path ahead may be messy, but it will be mine alone, full of my dreams and my accomplishments. I ask that you please take the time to consider the possibilities that lay ahead of you. Untie yourself from your heavy shackles and go see the world! I am, and always will be, extremely sorry for all the time I wasted sitting at home and not being who I am, instead of who they want me to be.

Forever and always,

Just Me

Billiard balls randomly bouncing around? I think not. I think waves are not particles and I think thought - consciousness - is but waves crashing against each other on this interstellar ocean. Organs, organelles, cells, molecules, elements, atoms, quarks. But keep slicing and dicing. Eventually the circles become dots and the dots become lines.

Perhaps the tapestry of spacetime - time, really - is indeed a tapestry, woven time and time again by this very fabric. Maybe there is just Time, Time is omnipotent, therefore there is just You - and You are omnipotent. Magic is just using your instrument in the right way. Spells are sounds.

In this kosmic symphony, life is what you make it.

I.

remember when ?

you asked

voice t

r

a

i

l

(s)i(l)

(e)n(ce)

g

my mind

filled the left

by your words

yes

i remember.

II.

"Remember when...?" you asked me, eyes avoiding mine.

I squeezed your hand. You looked at me then. I smiled. "Yes, I remember."

Fuck this

quar·an·tine

/ˈkwôrənˌtēn/

.

(pee-ri-ud)

Parenthesis.

Parent thesis.

I mean it.

(mean(ly))

Justly,

just apprehend it.

The world’s in rehab.

Captain Ahab

trying to grab

the Moby Dick.

n

e

t

f

l

i

x

.

And chill.

Fuck the pills.

The Art of the Deal?

Mental farts are what I feel.

Going

c

r

a

z

y

Muppet Treasure Island

CABIN

F

E

V

E

R

But fuck it. I’m still a believer.

My daughter-in-law Estella wraps a scarf around my neck and tugs firmly to knot it. I tolerate the babying. Might as well. “Take care, mamma.” Her words are only slightly muffled by the pristine white mask covering half her face. A shoulder squeeze through blue latex gloves suffices in place of a standard cheek kiss. She is saying goodbye.

It’s more kindness than my own son offers. Perhaps I should have been better to Estella while I had the chance. Luca stands in the corner, his own mask in place. The three of us have matching sets. As I open the door, I pause, giving him one last chance. He takes it.

“Mamma.”

I turn expectantly, and he’s eight years old again, a boy who needs his mother. Suddenly I can remember every bedtime story, every boo-boo kissed better. I try to pinpoint when the distance between us grew so vast.

“Mamma,” Luca repeats, and he takes a step towards me. For a second, I think he might hug me, wrap his arms tightly around my waist like when he was little, but then I watch him grow up; his eyes harden, his jaw sets. “You are strong, mamma. The doctors will help you get better quickly, and then you will return to us, sì?”

I nod, wondering how much of his own words he believes. I haven’t been the invincible mother of his youth for a while. Would he have gifted me a final embrace if he knew he would not see me alive again? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

This time when I walk through the door, no one stops me. “I love you,” I offer over my shoulder, and I gather the echoes into my heart before the door closes behind me.

I am not going to the hospital. I’ve always hated it, that bustling, chaotic, hotbed of disease. And death. The nobler part of me refuses because it feels wrong to steal a spot from someone younger and more deserving. The selfish part of me refuses out of fear of past ghosts. Both parts agree that we will not be going to the hospital.

I walk for a few blocks. The streets are practically empty, but I see the homeless man I sometimes spare a few coins sitting in his usual spot. With minor protests from my knees, I take a seat against the wall a little ways from him. His eyes widen at me. Maybe he recognizes me? Maybe he’s side-eyeing my Valentino handbag. Either way, the rattling cough I let loose is enough to scare him off.

I pull down my mask and reach into my coat pocket. I’ve filched a pack from Luca’s stash of Davidoffs that Estella doesn’t know about. I hope he forgives me. I know how hard he works to sneak them in the house. I light one and take a satisfactory first drag.

I’m halfway through the next cig when I allow myself to contemplate my situation. At twenty years old, I boldly proclaimed that I would stop fearing death at sixty, that I would have lived enough to let go. Now, at seventy-three, I want to box that arrogant little shit’s ears. Still, I have chosen death over the alternative. I get through five cigs before I push myself up. It’s dark. I must head to my final destination.

My family and my husband’s family have been buried in the same cemetery for generations. This means I have a little plot of land reserved for me between Rafe and my oldest (and favorite) sister, Bianca. I plop down on the black soil, ignoring the complaining of my joints. One hand props up another cigarette, the other traces the words I know from memory etched into Rafe’s gravestone.

Rafael Matteo Giordano

1939-1999

Loving Father, Husband, and Brother

He’s been gone for a while, long enough that I only feel a dull ache in my chest when thinking of him. Not long enough that I’ve forgotten the pain of doctor’s visits and medical treatments and all the other messiness that comes with lung cancer. I suck in a lungful of smoke, and my hacking grows so violent that I have to wait a few minutes before I can take another.

This is how I plan to go out: smoking my way into oblivion. Lung cancer can’t kill me now, the way it took my husband. It’s too slow. I laugh in my mind. My throat fails to make the correct sound.

I lean back and look up at the stars. They are beautiful, and cold. I shiver. I haven’t been stargazing since Luca was a child. It’s harder to breathe lying down, and my inhales now come in shallow gasps. I will slowly drown in this sea of bones. I bring the cigarette to my lips and close my eyes.

I trust the stars are still shining.

I. Hollow

Emptiness preferable

To the sadness that once

Filled me to the brim that

Leaked out of me through the

Cracks in my eyes

Emptiness that I try to

Fill with liquor and fuzziness and

Last-minute goodbyes.

ii. hallow

i will cherish you while you are

mine to hold

as i should have cherished you

yesterday and the day before

too late? not

too late to tell you with

my words show you with

my actions think with

every waking thought

i love you and will miss

you, friend

III. Shallow

We sat on opposite ends of the room for an entire semester. You were quiet and never spoke. We took two more classes together before I noticed you. It wasn’t until you stood in the front of the classroom and gave that presentation, with your beautiful looping handwriting and your beautiful self that I saw you. That was 23 days ago. In the time since, we’ve connected on Facebook, done homework together, shared a drink, peeled googly eyes off each others’ arms, and hugged. In a time like now, little crushes seem insignificant. But you’ll still be a question mark for me, and I wonder if we were lucky or unlucky.

IV. Sallow

I have a tan on my face

and my arms and my legs

that I got within a few days of arriving home.

I turn golden in the sunlight.

Please don’t shout at me spit on me beat me

just because you fear a disease that you’ve given

my name my hair my eyes my face.

I am golden.

Isn’t that a shade of yellow?

Don’t show me your ugliness if

you can’t see my

beauty.

V. Allow

I’m not dying, just lonely.

I’m not sick, just bored.

I’m not trapped, my open window tells me,

It could be worse, much much

worse. Still, let me feel sad.

Let me whine and be grumpy and perhaps shed a tear.

I’m not unloved, just isolated.

I’ve lost no one, and yet everyone.

I write to ignite frightened minds and remind them of the might they might be inclined to find inside the confines of life interwined with divine vibes and sublime rhymes propeling lives to rise and thrive. I write because words are magic and sentences are spells, and the thought of underutilizing ourselves is tragic so I feel frantic to go savage and ring some chilling bells. I write because letters are elements, words are molecules, and paragraphs are the means to create worlds forming books upon shelves. I write because I can.

Understand?

A/N: Wrote this for the October challenge, "The Final Countdown," didn't pay close enough attention to the deadline. But here it is.

-------------------------

Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock.

The signal is slow and rhythmic, not at all in line with the erratic thumping within my chest. I’m on my feet by the time the stone slab that is the wall of my prison slides open, and they appear, the aliens.

The first time I saw them, they seemed harmless enough—round, faceless, and much smaller than me. But I soon learned that it was their technologies that made them dangerous. An alien approaches me now, holding a sleek black stick. They’ve used this one before; it’s relatively painless. I still back away, but then the stick points at me, and my vision goes dark.

When I awake, I’m in a different room. The aliens are projecting pictures on the wall. This is our main form of communication, although I have been picking up some of their vocabulary during my time here.

A rough translation of their message: “You have seven days remaining before the destruction of humankind. Find the object to save your race.”

This is not the first message. I was given 50 days initially. Nothing has turned up during the first 43. I don’t know why I was chosen. I know I’m not the only one chosen. There are others on this same mission. I know I want to give up. I know I can’t afford to.

They let me out finally, and I immediately know that today is not a good day. The sky is ashen, and the air around me is hot enough to burn my skin. Something happened to the entire planet when the aliens came. Resources once in abundance were depleted. Most of the ground is now barren, which makes my task difficult.

I need to find a plant that will save mankind, one that emits something special that the aliens desperately need. The problem is that the aliens harvested most of our plants when they arrived here.

I begin to roam. There's no one around me. I don't find it. When I get tired, I walk back to the ship where they keep me. The door opens, and then I'm escorted back to my cell.

~~~

Knock-knock.

It's five days later when I at last see a good day. The clouds of ash have receded somewhat to make the sky a less angry pink. I can almost pretend like it's a normal day, if not for the destruction around me.

Today, I decide to rest by the crater that was once a lake and enjoy the hot breeze that caresses my skin. When I fail tomorrow, I know it will be the end for me, and the end of humankind. Relaxing, contemplating, reminiscing by the lake, I can't bring myself to care.

When I return to the ship, the aliens say nothing.

~~~

Knock.

It's the last day. When they let me off the ship this time, the door locks behind me with an air of finality. I get the message. If I don't find the plant, I shouldn't bother coming back.

Today is not as nice as yesterday, but I still consider doing nothing. Searching is futile.

A scream pierces the air, and I pause. In all my 50 days, I hadn't encountered another living being outside. I hear the scream again. It has a slight musical quality to it. My mind immediately goes to my child, the one I had lost, but I know it isn't De'lia.

Still, I go in the direction of the sound, reaching a clearing. I see an emaciated child, fiercely clutching a plant. An alien is attempting to wrestle it away.

I already know it's the wrong kind of plant. This is not what the aliens want. The child wins the battle and begins to hungrily consume the plant.

The alien pulls out a stick. I'm too far away to do anything when the alien pushes the stick through the child's body. The child stops eating and goes still. I don't understand until I see the blood seeping out of the place where the stick is planted.

The alien calmly retracts the stick and picks up the plant, studying it.

I look at the body slumped on the floor, and suddenly the child is De'lia. Without thinking, I surge forward, slamming into the alien from behind. We fall together, and we land with a sickening crack. I push myself up, but the alien lies still on the ground.

I flip it over and see that I've damaged its shell. The alien does have a face after all, hidden behind the white shell that encompassed its body. A face with two eyes, a mouth, and a strange protrusion in the center. The mouth is currently opening and closing, making sputtering noises.

The expression looks familiar to me, and I realize that the alien cannot breathe here. I saw the aliens do the same thing to my kind on their ship. They drew the air from the room so that they couldn't breathe. That was the punishment for the ones who fought back, who refused the mission.

The alien doesn't struggle for long. Soon, its odd pale eyes, with only a splotch of color in the center, are staring blankly up at the unforgiving sky.

I go to De'lia, cradle their head, caress their face. In the distance, the human ship that held me flies off. The ground begins to tremble. Holding De'lia, I weep.

The man was sitting in the old yellow armchair in the corner. That was the first thing she noticed when she awoke. Actually, that wasn’t quite right. First she noticed the aching in her joints, the lethargy in her limbs, the cloudiness of her thoughts, all of which told her she was getting too old for this, whatever ‘this’ might be. Certainly too old to be seeing strange young men in her bedroom.

“Who are you?” she asked calmly, not wishing to startle him into any violent action. Still, he jolted upright in his seat. He had been sleeping, she realized.

Then he stood and approached her bed slowly. Not menacingly, but warily, as if he were the one who needed protection from her. She almost chuckled at the thought.

Instead, she repeated firmly, “Who are you?” This close up, her failing eyes could see that her initial perception had been wrong. He wasn’t young. He had wrinkles and creases and gray hairs. His face was weathered, tired. Middle-aged then, she decided.

“Joe, ma’am.”

“Well, Joe, didn’t your mother raise you better than to enter the rooms of sleeping women?”

His face now took on a strange look. Of discomfort, perhaps, at being scolded? “Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m here to give you some bad news.”

“Don’t tell me you’re Death, here to take me away.” She eyed him suspiciously.

“No ma’am, but . . . Death did take someone yesterday.”

Fear suddenly shot through her. “Who? Not my husband, not my Joseph?” It registered belatedly that she had not woken beside him, that she could not even remember him coming to bed last night.

“Jenny. There was a car crash.” Her confusion must have shown. “Jenny, your daughter.”

She looked at his expression, pinched and appropriately pained, and couldn’t help but smile. It was out of relief, and a bit of amusement—she would not deny that his face looked silly crumpled in that manner. “You must have the wrong room. I don’t have a daughter.”

A nurse chose that moment to enter. “Mrs. Park, I have your breakfast.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved the nurse over.

The man stepped back, towards the door. “Sorry to have bothered you, ma’am. I see now that I was mistaken.” He paused, and for a moment, she thought he would say something else. Then he turned and walked out. For the best, she thought. There was no use in extending their odd, mismatched conversation.

The nurse joined him soon after.

The woman sat up in her bed and diligently ate her pudding. It was chocolate, her favorite.

Outside, the nurse turned to the man. “One of the bad days?”

He nodded.

“Doesn’t your sister usually visit on Wednesdays?”

“She - uh - an accident,” He closed his eyes briefly. “She won’t be coming anymore.”

The nurse reached out and touched his shoulder. “I’m really sorry to hear that. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people.”

He glanced toward his mother, visible through the window in the door, smiling down at her pudding cup. “Neither do I.”