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The smell of the popcorn, the roar of the crowd; the clinking of suckers’ rings upon weighted tin bottles, a thousand diodes thunking on and off as the carnival lights blaze forth into the night sky. The littlest of children begging their elders for the overpriced sawdust filled animals dangling within the barker’s booth—the ferris wheel boosts you higher and higher. You are above them, yet you are a part of them. Against your better judgment, despite the tract marks you spied on the ticket-taking carney’s arm… you hold your lover tight and let yourself drift out into the night, first cousin to the emancipated balloons loosed from below. For the first time in forever, you know peace and abandon.
And then it comes again. First at 4am to a cold reception—you still have yet to awaken from the last good sleep you will have for months to come. Again at 6am, when you are still not at your peak performance.
“Just one more hour…”
Then at 8, you see your error. The call had been made four times over since last you checked, and there are no more lies that you can tell yourself. It’s that time again, the wheel come ‘round at last.
“How bad is it?”
“Bad.”
“Shit.”
Your life, suddenly so wonderful, is cast aside as your days take a darker routine. What freedom you once had in leisure is quickly dissolved in the face of inevitability. Did you say enough? Did you do enough? Are your efforts now paltry fiduciaries, or a true extension of your natural habits?
You long for the times of silence the hour-long drive to the hospital offers. Freedom from the gasping of the respirator and muffled sobs from down the hall. The doctors are there to help, you know, but in your secret heart you wonder if perhaps the morphine drip hasn’t been a little too constant?
“No hope, all we can do is make him comfortable…”
“Bullshit, he’s looking better.”
“Course I do, they let me eat today…”
And the car engine roars as you make your way home, perhaps you will sleep for more than four hours tonight.
Life has a new rhythm.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Up for work, a phone call at lunch.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
A workout if you can spare it; it gives traffic time to die down.
No showers though, no time or place, though you once emptied a gallon jug of water over your head in a deserted parking lot to make up for it. Fast food if you’re lucky, hunger if you’re not.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
A drive out of town, then down the country roads—they used to trouble you, but no longer. You have charted their miles well and know that your heart will forever sink at their curves and intersections.
The hospital at last.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
You try, you really do, to say all that you can and make up for lost time… all the time you once had hoped unending. All that you put off on tomorrow never knowing until today that the rotation of Earth alone was not enough to steel yourself against the hereafter. You try. You hope.
You hope.
You hope.
You will not mourn when there is still hope.
Surely God above has a plan for this.
You hope.
But you never wonder if perhaps the Lord’s own planning might not resemble your own.
Drip.
Drip.
…
You’re barely past the threshold of sleep when the call comes at last.
The world keeps spinning, yet it’s left you behind this night.
You’re one ghost older once more.
Yet the world spins on
And passes away
For now, the grass grows upon the graves.