*Hollow Words* 08/11/2014
Her grey hair, missing in patches, blows in the muggy , bathroom air as the fan rotates. Click click click Woosh, the plastic blades go. Clearly this woman is dying. Cancer maybe.
She needs to use the bathroom located in the shower; doesn't have the vitality to walk to the other end of the store to the womens room.
" yes ma'am", I say, " you can use this bathroom".
"thank you", she says, as she exits.
"have a nice day", I say.
She notices my hollow words. She thanks me again. I notice ... Her. Hollow words.
In the back of my mind, as I'm cleaning the shower she used, to relieve herself in, I think, " her death now passes to me"...
In the smell of the toilet, as I lean down to wipe it, her death, now my death, passes. Switches hosts.
You can feel it the rest of the day. Your sunburned , thirty year old face, is now grey, deathly.
The pains in your liver intensify. The mind, which I relied upon for so long for succor, has flicked the final switch. Decline. Falling by choice though. I'm done. The lady with the patchy hair, and frightened eyes, is just my excuse.
I was going to wait, hold off, until after my parole was finished, it was only going to be one year of parole, to retreat. Maybe collect disability for a while. Relax. I will not take the inferon, chemo therapy, to (possibly) defeat the hepatitis c virus in my blood.
If you YouTube peoples struggles, see one week, two... Two months, four... You will see why I made this decision.
They become nothing. Deflated. Playacting smiles. Eyes haunted. Like that lady that needed to empty her pain pill and pharmaceutical full bowels hurriedly, in a stinky old truckstop shower. Couldn't wait...
Can't. Wait....
