Pictures Of Life

The Eye Of The Storm

I beat on the wall and my sight rounded like scoped through a magnifying glass outlining every irregularity on the surface of the wall. I use my fist to hurt myself a second time; using the crooked vending machine as an excuse for having taken my dollar and kept my pack of cookies.

Behind came a wave of uncertainty, either sadness or anger found the surface and took a breath out of me, it all feels the same in the end. I lean on the wall trying to squeeze in the tear that wants to escape me, and as it runs down my face I slide down the wall and sit on the floor. Maybe it was the inevitable result of all the memories, maybe it was just my anxieties trying to find resolution. Maybe it was because my wife and daughter had just died and while the color of their pale skins was already fading in the next room I could find no other way to accept it; accepting that my past was spelled with regret and the days to come would weight no less.

But then again... maybe it was the cookies.

All I ever grieved was Raury, my dog, He died when I was ten and I felt my best friend had left on purpose, just to fuck me over and leave me alone. Not that He did, but maybe grieving people was a problem for me since five years before him, when my sister decided to check out through her bedroom door only packing make-up and a five feet piece of rope. To this day I believe it took me five years and the death of my dog to realize what suicide really was, just enough not to see it as a solution to my problems.

There is a special kind of bird that loves nothing more than to fly; flying free and looking down upon us pretentious and fearful of being caught in one of our big-brained traps fruit of his ineptitude. It loves not his kind, not his offspring, not his place of birth or the food that keeps it alive, but its freedom, itself. Trap this bird in a cage full of bars; and even when you feed it, give it water, love it, even talk to it, It will use his very own beak to pinch one by one every single feather that makes it beautiful and precious to the eyes, and slowly It will bleed and ache the life out of itself, only because its freedom was gone for a day and knowing not if it could possibly come back. No hope, no resilience, no consideration for its own life, only the undesired way the now took him by his wings and said no to its most shallow and satisfied of wishes.

My sister was a bird, a beautiful and delicate bird that could sing to angles from the core of the earth and they would still hear every drop of her soul in a phrase. I couldn't help but hear her in Clair's voice. Listening to my daughter sing was like taking me to my four year old self on Christmas night, outside by the golden fire, golden like their hair.

I could love, I did, I still do, but when whoever it could be resolves gone every feeling stops and everything I had is frozen, not severed off, not trashed away, not shrined like grandpa's old trophies and war pins... just frozen, useless; occupying space, always in the way... just like grandpa. We all love him but... even Clair once told me the same.

-Why is pops always on that chair, looking at the window with nothing to say..? It's rude!

The old man had Alzheimer's disease and had shut down his gears a long time ago. Everything he saw and everything he put himself under just to deal with it came back until it took him away. Merciless karma for a merciless man, sometimes I believe It too cruel to be karma at all. Maybe the old fiend found a way to make himself pay by only looking out a window, and only the Lord knows what He can see through there.

I don't think I understood this until now. Just like the old man on the chair without a word to say now I am looking at a chair on the floor of this fucking hospital.

It reeks of medicine and bodily fluids. I don't know how many times the same nurse is going to walk by in front of me. I haven't seen her face but they all look the same to me. The only thing that's kind enough to let me tell them apart is their shoes. God, I wished people didn't walk on the floor... at least not today.

I can't avoid thinking I am the reason she's been walking back and forth in front of me. Even walked all around the floor just to not come back in the opposite direction she had just...

-Excuse me!

I have to stop this nonsense.

-What do you do in here?

By her look she's either strangely surprised I've said anything after twenty minutes or she totally unaware of my situation and thinks I am hitting on her.

-I'm a nurse.

-That I know... What do you do in here? Tell me the part I don't know of it.

I was being rude on purpose; I was not in the mood to explain myself.

-I'm writing reports, I'm an intern...

Enough was said for me to interrupt her. By this point our twenty one minute conversation had gone far enough for me to understand her purpose.

-What's your name nurse?

-Teresa

Absurdly fitting name for a nurse.

-Did they send you to check on me, Teresa?

She does not need to say it, her apologetic gaze is already telling me every infuriating piece of information I am about to get. I decide to take a breath and release some of the steam I had been accumulating... then she had to say it.

-Yes... I'm sorry Mr. Moore, We are all worried about you.

"We" that means they've arrived at the hospital and this is the time to really neutralize my insides. It's either that or me going to jail after a triple funeral with my father in law as breaking news.
I stand up and She's still talking, but I am not listening anymore. She needs to shut the fuck up because I need to ask her what it is I am about to deal with. I call her name but She's one of those. Here goes the second attempt:

-Teresa!!!

Please don't cry.

-How many are there?

-How many? Just two.

Good. That means their second son was still in some Japanese whore-house when his sister was being crushed by a falling crane. Not that I like the picture, but the way things turned out, now its only good news that idiot isn't in town.

I walk and I feel the weight of my thighs and legs and hips and chest resting on my feet. It's heavy to walk with this much inside. The lights are bright, It bothers me to look up and looking down doesn't fell too good, the tiling reminds me of a place that has nothing to do this this; and I don't need that in my head too.

All that's left is the stupefied old hag and the chauvinist North American asshole of my in-laws to fix my sight on; and they are waiting for me to unload all their shit like teenagers on mescaline and I'm the bucket of puke.