I would like to talk about dying
and no it does not satisfy me that there is an end to the madness which we call life
Knowing is what makes me comfortable and nothing disrupts my comfort quite like death;
the irony of panic feeling like a heart attack –
the state that my mental puts me in, feeling like I am at the precipice of death
For this I should know something about the nature of dying
I should have the fear in the moments before death bottled and potent
but I only know death in what it removes, not what it is.
Time we have bottled, it exists to you and me right now but you feel it too – it is slipping through our fingertips, the fingertips that one day we will look down upon and see the wrinkled skin, it is melting before our eyes, the eyes that will one day show us a cloudy world, it is running away from us and we know that our knees will only get weaker.
No one can tell you what to expect. Death is the one thing we cannot rationalize, even if giving life is a miracle.
In embryo, I lived off of my mother, and in birth, I was sheltered in arms. My anxious questions could be quickly answered by adults – adults who knew better. Adults trained in life. Adults wiser.
In adulthood, I came to understand why people made God. Why people made the stars into shapes and into shapes came signs, signs into cards. Cards into answers, God into answers. We rotate around the sun but youth grips us; naivety grips us.
God is the mother
Sky is the mother
Bible is the story
read to us
the anxiety builds questions
the spirituality breeds answers
Somebody knows better, somebody knows better.
I don’t mock these “somebodies.” I only wish they gave me peace like twirling my mother’s hair
around my finger
cushioned on the mattress,
“When you have nightmares,” she said, “call upon God and visualize that you’re being surrounded by love and light. He will protect you.”
Maybe God was in my room. My mommy slept next to me. Imagine the terror I felt when my mommy came to me, as I had grown into a woman, and asked me questions.
I’m still only a girl – I’m telling you.
I’m in the closet corner. I don’t know about death, so we don’t talk about death. The toys are here. Maybe God is here. My mommy is here.
