Fish and Bird.

Here I am. If I had known I would have brought you with me, and maybe this chain of events would have changed the week’s chain of events and you wouldn’t have a punctured lung and I wouldn’t be out two dollars and bad jokes. I watched you squirm around and it hurt us both so bad when I made you laugh, and with each breath, a hand’s length of blood shifting back and forth inside of a plastic tube hung to the floor that I thought, “maybe they re-use these tubes? No… no way.. they must dispose of them..”

I didn’t answer the second time you called me because I was nervous and didn’t recognize the phone number. But I’ll see you tomorrow.

My eyebrows are fixed in a perpetual aching frown. That’s okay though, because it looks pretty on me. This has got to stop. I’m sounding much more goth than I’m used to.

Maybe I can’t sleep tonight.

Surrounded by my Mima, my Tia, Papo, children, probably grandchildren, in a hospital bed, is my great uncle, Tio Vincentico, and he’s dying (I’d rather die at home but I suppose it’s a choice you could rarely, luckily, make).

I remember Mama’s wake, in Miami. I think I was in eighth grade. I played F-1 Racer on Game Boy the whole time, two player, with Dustin, we were lucky enough to have adapters. What were we supposed to do? The room was filled with terrible howls and I’m really into escapism.

So she was their mother. He’s the oldest brother and this could seem like an unravling of sorts, but you’d be hard pressed since there’s almost too many of us. We’re bursting from the seams of a faithful heavenly heart.

I won’t be there, but don’t hurt while you die, please. I don’t even recall the last time I saw you, but I see you in my head, and I don’t want to see you on your death bed. I wrote something in spanish on a card for you two weeks ago. I had to have my mom translate. My greatest memory of you is the time you got angry during a game of dominos (which is fairly common). I was laying on my stomach on the carpet, coloring, and I had a bad cold, and you knocked dominos off the wobbly card table, cursing in spanish. I knew because the curse words are all I know, when I really should know so very much more. A couple dominos landed near my coloring book and I rolled around laughing until everyone was laughing, because everyone knows you can’t take a Cuban temper too seriously. Dustin and I even made up a song about it.  Love you.

I wish I’d been a little girl and rolled around laughing when it came to other ethnic tempers. Then I’d still be on top of the game. I’m just too smushy-hearted for that.

Clocks in the sun.

Agh, I was planning on writing.  Now I can’t.  I’ll be back in five.