the blueshift journal

while she was dying, and the dying didn’t take long.

like when some lady who ran a nonprofit for people

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who were dying too young sent her a basket of stuff,

she said what do I need all this shit for now? she pulled

 

out the little bible and said I don’t have time to read,

I just wanna do do do. holding some plastic inflatable

 

thing, she hissed what the hell is this? and she threw

that little amorphous ball at me, round like her belly

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because all that fluid just had no place else to go.

there we sat on the floor together, riffling through

 

that dumb shit like little kids, throwing it all across

the bedroom. we laughed and laughed, until it hurt.

 

//

 

Mama said funny things while she was dying,

and sometimes it sounded like a song. like when

 

we went to the emergency room and she asked

am I still an emergency, baby boy? I said I’d always

 

turn the sirens on for her. and as she lay there

on the hospital bed while that poor nurse couldn’t

 

find a damn vein, Mama asked what does triage mean

anyway? I said it’s a place where there’s lots of blood.

 

and she said well we certainly don’t have that problem

in here, do we baby? and we giggled. and my daddy

 

and my brother laughed, too, and they laughed until

that laughter found a vein, and their eyes broke, and

 

their eyes bled like a dam. they just bled and bled

until it hurt and they thought they’d never bleed again.

 

//

 

Mama said funny things while she was dying,

but she was funny all along. I remember four days

 

before all that funny breath left her forever. how

daddy had been watching the ryder cup in the living

 

room with his sister and my brother and me all

weekend. Mama needed help from the bed to the toilet

 

and back, so I wrapped my arm around her and shuffled

real slow because it all just seemed to be going too fast.

 

and she asked are they still in there watching fucking golf?

I told her no, that it was all over now. and she said

 

oh thank god, baby boy. it’s not even a sport, is it? I laughed,

and I said no, Mama, it’s not even a fucking sport.

 

it’s nothing. you could do it in your sleep. and she said well,

I’ll have plenty of time for that then, won’t I baby? I laughed and

 

I laughed until I felt like I’d never laugh again. she held me

in her arms and said baby boy, I’m so scared. I’m so so scared.